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THE GLORIOUS LORD 



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THE GLORIOUS LORD. 




REV. F. B/MEYER, B. A. 

Author of ^^ Christian Living,''^ *' Shepherd Psabu^'^ etc. 



APR 6 1B9R1 , 




FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY: 
Chicago, New York, Toronto. 

Publishers Evangelical Literature. 



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Copyright i8g6, by 
Fleming H. Revell Company. 



CONTENTS. 



Chap. PAQB. 

I. The Hidings of God . . 5 

II. Suffered to Hunger . . 16 

III. There is a River . . 26 

IV. The Soul's True Affinity . 41 
V. Christ One and Manysided 52 

VI. How TO Become Like Christ 63 

VII. The Immanence of Christ . 74 

VIII. The Other Advocate . 87 

IX. Escape from the World's Cor- 
ruption ..... 100 

X. Other Worldliness . 116 

XI. The Pitcher and God's Well 127 



Zhc (5lodou8 Xorb. 



CHAPTER I. 

tri?e ^tbtngs of ®o6. 

IsA. xLv: 15. 

" Thou art a God that hidest Thy- 
self," the prophet Isaiah said, as he 
looked up from his study of the pro- 
cesses by which God was educating His 
people for their great destiny. Per- 
mitted an insight into the ways of God's 
providence, he had beheld the rise and 
fall of dynasty and empire, the captiv- 
ity, the exile, the restoration, the 
gradual elimination of idolatry and 
impurity, and the fusing of the entire 
nation into a condition in which God 



6 C{?e ©lortous £orb 

could use it for His own purpose; and 
now breaking away from his long and 
intent scrutiny of the ways of God, he 
breaks out with the cry, " Verily thou 
art a God that hidest Thyself, O God 
of Israel, the Saviour/' 

It is an exclamation that often rises 
to our lips in nature. We are always 
treading in the recent footprints of God; 
entering chambers that He seems just 
to have left; catching the glow of light 
which has just fallen from His face; 
but we always miss him. We go for- 
ward, and He is not there, and back- 
ward, but cannot perceive Him; we 
speak, and feel that He hears, but 
there is no reply; we look up, and 
know that He is looking down, but we 
cannot see Him; we feel after Him, and 
are conscious that His hand is some- 
where within reach, but we never touch 
it. Men talk of law, and force, but 
what are these expressions save con- 



Ctje fitbings of ®ob 7 

fessions that God, the mighty worker, 
is hidden from our view ? 

What thoughtful man can look upon 
the state of the world without acknowl- 
edging, on the one hand, that God 
must be present, and yet feeling, on 
the other, that He is certainly con- 
cealed. He does not step out of the 
unseen to arrest the progress of crime 
and high-handed wrong. There is no 
sign of His displeasure. Though His 
name is constantly taken in vain He 
utters no word of remonstrance. 
Though His glory is constantly trodden 
under foot He does not strive nor cry. 
Though His help is invoked, the 
heavens do not rend, or the cherub 
wings become the chariot of His 
descent, as of old, to the Psalmist's 
thought. He cannot be far away; He 
evidently hears and observes and feels 
all, but who would dare to speak or act 
as bad men do unless men were wont 



8 ^{?e glorious £or6 

to calculate upon God's concealment of 
Himself ? 

In our 0W71 life also we have to do 
with the hidings of God. Some days 
we walk in the dark, unable to see His 
face or to feel Him near; we sit in our 
deserted chambers; we puzzle over our 
insoluble problems; we ask our myriad 
questions. It seems then as though a 
thick veil hangs between us and Him 
whom we love. We are not sensible 
of any sin or inconsistency which has 
caused Him to withdraw, and yet there 
are the hidings of His face. Why has 
He taken that wife, or husband, or 
friend from our warm embrace, when 
so many another life, if similarly be- 
reaved, would have felt it less } Why 
this passion for love without its satis- 
faction > Why this hunger for knowl- 
edge and service without gratification ? 
From all these questions we turn, 
heartsick and weary, as Noah's dove 



Cf?e J)tbtngs of ®o6 9 

from winging her flight over the rest- 
less water. We are conscious that the 
miracle of the gradual healing of the 
blind man is a parable of our experi- 
ence. Our vision is but indistinct; we 
see men as trees walking. It will be 
necessary that the hand of Christ be 
laid again upon us ere we see all things 
clearly. 

And yet we cannot wonder at the 
mystery which veils God and His zvays. 
We are but children. Yesterday we 
were in the cradle; to-day we are sit- 
ting on the low form of the infant 
school. We have not yet commenced 
to graduate in the higher classes, and 
the faculties of the wisest and best 
amongst us, compared with those of 
the youngest angel, will probably 
range as those of a babe, when com- 
pared with the farthest acquirements 
of philosophic thought. 

Besides, God has to graduate Hi^ 



lo ^f?e ©lortous £or6 

revelation. Many mysteries have been 
unfolded to mankind in the later pages 
of the Bible, which were hidden from 
ages and generations. The sudden 
blaze of uncreated glory would dazzle, 
blind, and kill us. We could not bear 
the unveiled view of God. He must 
needs hide His glory as He passes by, 
revealing only His back parts. The 
revelation of the majesty of our Sav- 
iour was attempered to the ability of 
the disciples to bear it. The dawn of 
revelation, like that of the natural day, 
must be by almost insensible de^^rees. 
And then, further, it is obvious that 
there are reasons for God's dealings 
with ourselves and with others, which 
He cannot disclose. If He did we 
should not understand. How often 
does a parent tell a child to wait, be- 
cause there are things which cannot be 
explained; terms, the full meaning of 
which cannot be understood; relations, 



Cf?e fjibings of 606 11 

connections with others that involve 
principles which lie altogether beyond 
the range of immature thought. God 
has explained as much as our human 
faculties can apprehend, but there is 
much beyond our range; we see but 
part of His ways, and the thunder of 
His power we cannot understand. 
What if evil is stronger than we think ? 
What if mere Omnipotence be power- 
less to deal with it, and that it can 
only be quelled by moral and spiritual 
processes ? What if the moral benefit 
of the universe can be best promoted 
by allowing evil slowly to work itself 
out ? What if the redemptive purpose 
needs time to assert its supremacy ? 
What if the position of all beings and 
all worlds is being affected by the inci- 
dents which are transpiring upon the 
surface of our earth ? We know so 
little. We stand upon the rim of inex- 
plicable mysteries; our circle of light 



12 Ct?e ©lorious £orb 

only reveals the surrounding realm of 
darkness. 

Moreover, God must teach us to 
walk by faith and not by sight; what 
we see we cannot hope for. Where 
there are no rocks we need no pilot; 
where the path is plain we need no 
guide. It often happens that God says 
to His child, " I must shadow from you 
the sensible enjoyment of My Presence; 
I must withdraw the sunlight from your 
path; I must lead you from the green 
pastures and still waters into the dark- 
ened valley; I must deprive you of 
emotion, for you will grow better in the 
dark; but trust Me. " When God hides 
from us so much that we would fain 
know, let us believe that the same love 
conceals, as at other times reveals, and 
that shadow and sun are accomplishing 
our growth in grace, and in the knowl- 
edge and love of God. 

One consideration^ however, is grow- 



Ct?e ^ibings of (0o6 13 

ingly precious — God is love. He that 
hides Himself is also the Saviour. 
There is no question as to the essen- 
tial nature of Him who is working all 
things after the purpose of His own 
will. We know what friendship is. 
We can trust some souls so utterly that 
no act of theirs, however strange it 
seemed, could shake our faith in their 
unutterable love. Instead of inter- 
preting their heart by an isolated act, 
we explain the act by the tender heart 
behind it. We dare to believe that 
whatever appears to militate against 
love is only another way of expressing 
it more deeply. Thus as we think of 
God and know Him to be love, we 
stand in the sunshine of certainty, and 
everything settles into harmony and 
peace. 

All attests His love. The adapta- 
tion of light to the eye, of sound to 
the ear, of love to the heart. Take 



14 Cf?e (glorious Corb 

out of human life sin and its conse- 
quences, and the residuum proclaims 
the beneficence of the Creator. We 
can account for the presence and power 
of much which is dark and forbidding, 
and for the rest we can trust. The 
love of kindred hearts; the rhythm and 
beauty of Nature; the evident purpose 
which is leading all events and minds 
to a goal of glory; above all, the revela- 
tion given to us through holy men, 
through the Son and by the Cross — all 
prove to us that God is a Saviour. All 
His purposes emanate from His heart; 
all His dealings have salvation as their 
end; all events beneath His strong 
hand subserve the aims of His redeem- 
ing grace. He is saving us; He is 
saving the world; He is saving the 
universe; the Saviour God is ever going 
forth upon His ministries of love, and 
whatever may daunt and bewilder is 
somehow consistent with a love so 



trije t^ibxn^s of ©o6 15 

divine, so all-embracing, so infinite, 
that when the end has arrived the 
universe v^ill be compelled to admit 
that not one act was inconsistent with 
its loftiest conceptions of divine tender- 
ness. 



CHAPTER II. 

Suffered to ^ungen 

Deut. viii: i-io. 

From the foot of Pisgah Moses re- 
viewed the wanderings of the forty 
years, and bade the people remember 
all the way by which they had been 
led. He recognized the leading of Je- 
hovah in every step and every day of 
that terrible march, and with the clear- 
sightedness which comes at the end of 
an accomplished purpose, he saw some- 
thing of God's meaning in it all. There 
were, apparently, three reasons why 
God chose the way of the wilderness 
as the route for Canaan, instead of the 
comparatively easy one along the 
shores of the Mediterranean. 



Suffereb to i^unger 17 

The first purpose was that God 
might humble His people. Theirs had 
been a wonderful history. For them 
the land of Egypt had been smitten 
with the ten plagues. For them the 
first-born of Pharaoh had been stricken 
on the steps of the throne. For them 
ten thousand lambs had shed their life- 
blood on the eve of the Exodus. For 
them the Red Sea had cleft its waves, 
whilst Pharaoh and his host sank like 
a stone in its depths. For them angels 
had spread the daily breakfast on the 
desert sands. For them the rocks had 
flowed with water, and God Himself 
had descended in a chariot of cloud. 
There was every danger, therefore, 
lest the pride of their heart should 
rise, and lead them to think that there 
was something in themselves which 
had secured so great a succession of 
marvels. Therefore, God led them by 
the way of the wilderness, that, as they 



1 8 CI?e ©lortous Corb. 

came face to face with its difficulties, 
they might be able to realize their im- 
potence and dependence on Himself. 

This is a clue to the mystery of your 
life. This is why God permits you to 
come up against blank walls to meas- 
ure yourself in vain against immeasur- 
able and infinite forces, to stand look- 
ing down into depths you cannot 
fathom, and up into heights you cannot 
reach — to peer in vain into the mists 
that roll around the edge of your little 
life. Thus you shall know yourself to 
be but finite, insignificant — a worm 
and no man — less than nothing, and 
vanity. 

But there was a second reason why 
God led the people through the wilder- 
ness — that He might know what was 
in their heart. We none of us know 
how weak and sinful our heart is 
until we are brought face to face 
with temptation. We pride ourselves 



Suffereb to ^unger 19 

upon our purity, as white robes; but 
it may be we are pure only because 
we have never been subjected to the 
temptations which have blasted the 
lives and characters of others. We 
seem gentle and forgiving; but it may 
be that we have been sheltered from 
the vehemence of jealousy, envy, and 
hatred; have lived amongst those who 
have loved and honored us; and have 
been undisputed monarchs in the little 
world of our life. We boast our hon- 
esty; but we have never known what 
it was to leave behind us in our homes a 
number of little children crying for 
bread, whilst all around plenty seemed 
strewn within our easy reach. It is 
not in Goshen with its flesh-pots and 
unstinted abundance, but in the wilder- 
ness where the supply of water fails, 
and the last crumb of bread is devoured, 
and the pressure of want crushes the 
soul — it is there that God knows what 



20 d?e (Slortous £oxb 

is in our heart, and our pretensions to 
nobility are tested to the uttermost. 

Bui the third and main reason why 
God led the people through the wilder^ 
ness was to suffer them to hunger. It 
may be that hunger had been compar- 
atively unknown by them before they 
found themselves in the wilderness; 
and is it not a remarkable expression 
that God suffered them to hunger ? Of 
course He could have so contrived that 
they had not hungered. The manna 
might have fallen before ever they came 
to Moses to murmur against him. The 
vast flocks of birds might have been 
carried on the wings of the wind within 
easy reach of their tents before the 
supplies which they brought with them 
from Egypt had been exhausted. But 
no, God suffered them to hunger. He 
had implanted the appetite for food; 
He knew how keen the pangs of hunger 
were, and yet he permitted theni to 



Suffered to ganger 21 

suffer. How wonderful that God should 
let people suffer, and should put them 
into circumstances in which suffering is 
inevitable ! 

There is other and worse hunger 
than that for food. The hunger for 
love and sympathy ! The hunger for 
a tone in a voice that is never heard ! 
The hunger for the touch of a hand 
that is never felt ! The hunger for 
opportunities of ministry that always 
elude the grasp ! The hunger for con- 
genial occupation, for knowledge, for 
travel, for refinement, art, beauty ! 
God has implanted a strong desire for 
these things in our hearts, and yet He 
puts us into positions where there is no 
food, no answer, no satisfaction — 
nothing but the sense of a gnawing, 
aching desire. 

Why is this ? Partly, that we should 
learn that the true life after all does 
not depend upon the full supply of 



22 Ct?e (glorious £or6 

those food-stuffs which men deem so 
necessary, but upon something deeper, 
purer, diviner — God Himself. He suf- 
fered them to hunger that He might 
wake them know. In other words, 
had it not been for the hunger, Israel 
would not have known, and we should 
not know, what is revealed in the lack 
of all else. Life, which is life indeed, 
consists not in the abundance of things 
that we possess, but in knowing God, in 
having God, in being known and pos- 
sessed by God, in receiving and feed- 
ing upon the words of God. Oh, 
blessed hunger, that drives the soul to 
God, and suddenly finds in God more 
than all. "Man doth not live by 
bread only, but by every word that 
proceedeth from the mouth of God." 
We would not say one single word 
against accepting all innocent and right 
things that God puts into our life to 
meet the hunger implanted in our 



Suffered to i^unger 23 

souls, but we affirm that, as it was 
with Jesus in the wilderness, so it is 
with many of His saints, who are 
chosen to close fellowship in His re- 
demptive purpose, that ordinary sup- 
plies are cut off, in order that they 
may be driven to find the springs of 
life in God. 

And what is it which really feeds 
man's soul in the things that he so 
eagerly seeks ? Is it not a Divine 
quality which is in them, because they 
have come from God, as His gift, and 
as containing His thought ? It must 
be possible, therefore, to derive from 
God Himself at first hand and without 
intervention of any of these things, 
those qualities that are necessary to 
sustain and satisfy the soul. O hungry 
one, take thy hunger, of whatsoever 
kind it be, to God Himself, and learn 
to find in Him thy bread. 

Then the manna came. All around 



24 Cf?e (glorious £or5 

the desert-camp there lay the small, 
round thing, freshly steeped in dew, 
and waiting to be gathered by the host. 
Beautiful in appearance; sweet to 
taste; prepared and ministered by 
angels. It was a rare gift, but Israel 
would never have known it, had they 
not first known hunger. God has 
something better for us than we fear. 
Not the leek or the onion, the garlic 
or the swine's flesh, but angels' food. 
Something so refined, so exquisite in 
its texture, so superabundant in its 
gladness, so divine in its quality, that 
it were better for us to have one meal 
of it a day in the desert than be in 
Paradise itself without it. Arise then, 
hungry pilgrim of the wilderness 
march, do not sit brooding in thy 
tent, eating out thy soul in thy de- 
spair, go forth unto God, unto God, 
thy exceeding joy. Take thy vessel 
with thee, and gather for thy need. 



Suffereb to ^unger 25 

If thou gather much thou shalt have 
none to spare, and if Httle, thou shalt 
have enough. " Thou shalt eat and 
be satisfied, and bless the name of the 
Lord, who has dealt bountifully with 
thee," and God alone is enough. 



CHAPTER III. 
" Cl^ere is a Htper 1 '' 

Psalm xlvi: 4. 

A song by an unknown singer ! 
Some son of Korah, borne on the tide 
of inspiration, uttered it in one of the 
darkest hours of his nation's history. It 
is evidently contemporaneous with Isa. : 
xxxiii. The spirit of heroic faith that 
thrilled Isaiah had passed to some 
younger heart, and what in him was 
prophecy, in this was Psalm. 

Sennacherib, with 200,000 of the 
cruellest soldiers that ever drew the 
sword, had crossed the northern frontier 
of Palestine, or had already stationed 
himself on the hills that were round 
about Jerusalem, intent on its capture 



"CI?ere is a Htper T' 27 

and pillage. The virgin daughter of 
Zion was strongly fortified. Military 
skill had made the best possible use of 
the strong natural features of her posi- 
tion, and Jewish patriots had chal- 
lenged their children to tell her towers, 
mark well her bulwarks, and consider 
her palaces, that they might tell the 
story to succeeding generations. 

But there was one fatal defect, which 
invalidated all these advantages. Jeru- 
salem was not well supplied with water. 
A deficient water supply ! This meant 
disaster to the best concerted schemes 
of fortification and defence. 

Dr. Geikie gives an interesting ac- 
count of the water supply of ancient 
Jerusalem. The only spring known to 
exist there rises beneath the ancient 
site of the Temple, and supplies what 
are known as the Fountain of the Vir- 
gin and the Pool of Siloam. This per- 
ennial supply of crystal water was, how- 



28 d?e glorious €orb 

ever, not sufficient to meet the require- 
ments of such vast populations as 
crowded the city at the great festivals, 
and w^ere driven thither, as at the time 
of which we write, by the pressure of 
invasion. Every effort was therefore 
made to augment the supply. There 
was a great system of subterranean 
tanks, forty to sixty feet deep, hewn out 
of the soft limestone, which underlay a 
harder rock on which the city was built. 
These were of great antiquity, and in 
one Jeremiah was confined. Vast cis- 
terns were also built to catch and keep 
the rains. But, in addition, large pools, 
fed by aqueducts, were added outside 
the city and within. One aqueduct, 
built by Solomon, brought water from 
the Pools of Solomon beyond Bethle- 
hem, and poured it into the huge reser- 
voirs of the Temple area, a distance of 
thirteen miles. Hezekiah is also cred- 
ited with having built yet another vast 



" Cljere is a Htper 1 '' 29 

conduit, bringing the waters of Gihon 
straight to the west side of the city 
of David. In later days Herod the 
Great executed a marvellous work of 
the same kind. 

All these efforts on the part of the 
citizens to remedy their water supply 
were a confession on their part to its 
deficiency, and afforded the ground for 
the perpetual iteration of the prophets 
that God Himself would be to His 
people all that a river would have been 
in the abundance and freeness of its 
supplies. 

" What ! '' said Isaiah, in one of his 
magnificent outbursts, " do you require 
a river, whose flashing breadth would 
intercept the assault of the foe, and 
make it impossible for him to place 
battering-ram or scaling ladder in im- 
mediate proximity to the walls ? You 
need it not. The glorious Lord will 
be to us in place of broad rivers and 



30 CI?e glorious £orb» 

streams. AH around our city walls 
lies the engirding protection of the God 
of our fathers." 

" What !" said this son of Korah, 
" do you want a supply of water to en- 
able you to withstand the exigencies of 
the siege .^ All that will be yours in 
having God. He is not only around 
us; He is in the midst of us, and His 
presence, like a river, will make glad 
the city. Would you have a broad 
river pouring its translucent waters 
over the glistening pebbles, and purl- 
ing in its majestic flow, supplying 
every cistern and garden with abund- 
ant water ? This is yours in the Most 
High, who counts our city as the holy 
place of His tabernacle.'* 

Mr. Rendel Harris classes the water 
supply of Jerusalem under four heads, 
and uses these as illustrating certain 
conditions of spiritual life, with which 
we are all familiar. 



"Cljere is a Kiperi" 31 

T/ie Pool of Siloam represents the 
stagnation of those whose character 
and hfe show no signs of advance from 
year to year; always overcome by the 
same sins, reading the same chapters 
of the Bible, offering the same prayers. 

The Pool of Bethesda stands for 
those whose life is intermittent. An 
angel comes down from time to time 
to trouble the waters, and for a while 
they possess and impart healing virtue, 
but the impulse is soon exhausted, and 
many a weary soul waits till the stir- 
ring comes again. 

The Brook Kedron was fouled with 
the refuse of the city through which it 
flowed. It was, therefore, hardly fit 
to drink, though even to-day the water- 
carriers fill their water-jars there. This 
represents such as mingle with their 
professions of Christianity much that 
is inconsistent and worldly. 

The Acque ducts of Solomon recall 



32 Cf?^ Glorious Cotb 

the experience of many who are always 
depending for their rehgious Hfe on the 
ministry of others. They do seek 
water from the distant hills, but they 
are somewhat too dependent on the 
teacher or conference or book by which 
it is brought within their reach. 

Now all these classes of Christians 
are bidden to avail themselves of the 
River whose streams make glad the 
City of God. There is a sense in 
which the heavenly city has come 
down out of heaven from God. Our 
citizenship and conversation are there. 
There are times when, through our 
union with the living Saviour, we may 
say with the dying Payson: " Its glories 
beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its 
odors are wafted to me, its sounds 
strike upon my ears, and its spirit is 
breathed into my heart." These are 
the times when the river in full flow is 
passing before us, making us glad with 



"Cljere is a KtDcr 1'' 33 

the gladness which comes straight from 
the heart of the throne; and we are 
bidden, "whosoever will," to take of 
the water of life freely. Not of the 
future only did the Apostle affirm that 
he saw a river of water of life, gleam- 
ing as crystal, proceeding out of the 
throne of God and of the Lamb, in the 
midst of the street of the New Jerusa- 
lem. Its source may be at the throne, 
but its w^aters have flowed down to 
earth, else how could men be so freely 
bidden to take ? 

Let us live by the river, fellow-be- 
liever, taking up its waters at any mo- 
ment of need, just as the dwellers by 
the mighty Amazon or Congo go down 
to its vast supplies to help themselves 
without stint. They can afford to be 
extravagant, prodigal, wasteful ! Is 
there not plenty ? Can they not come 
again and again ? Is there any fear of 
the reservior of the hills running dry ? 



34 ^^^ (Slortous £or5 

Yet sooner might the Congo or Amazon 
become exhausted than thy God; and 
sooner might the river remonstrate 
with the child for dipping its tin cup 
too frequently into its bosom, than the 
glorious Lord find fault with thy too 
incessant resort to Him for His more 
abundant grace. Take ! take! take ! is 
Heaven's repeated invitation. " Thou 
shouldest have smitten five or six 
times," is God's bitter complaint. 

There can be no stagnation where 
the river comes; it brings life with it, 
and deepens from the ankles to the 
knees, and from the knees to the loins 
till its waters are a depth that cannot 
be waded through; and its current 
bears the soul forward irresistibly from 
grace to grace, from a superficial ex- 
perience to the deep things of God, 
from the elements of the Gospel to the 
love that passeth understanding. 

There can be no inter^nittence^ as 



"Cijere is a JJtper T' 35 

when the waters need to be stored in 
some inner rock-chamber before they 
can gush out to their beneficent minis- 
try, and, having exhausted themselves, 
retire to gather a fresh supply. This 
intermittent life is a very sad one, 
God-dishonoring and man-disappoint- 
ing. There is something better when 
the soul is in perennial and abiding fel- 
fowship with Christ, by the Holy Spirit. 
Certainly there are freshets for us all, 
but these come on a full stream, and 
not on dry watercourses which have 
become heaps of stones. This main- 
tained experience is only possible when 
care is taken over the early morning 
hours, and we can say with the Psalm- 
ist, " Mine eyes are ever towards the 
Lord." 

There is no pollittion or impurity in 
the religious life of those who drink of 
that river. Too often the religious 
observances of people are so mingled 



36 Cl^e glorious £or6 

with the wordly show of some fashion- 
able church, with the consciousness of 
being one of a gaily-dressed throng, or 
with the desire to do as others are 
doing, that the spirit is befouled in the 
act of drinking of the heavenly stream. 
There is all the difference between the 
waters that have flowed through a 
great city and those that issue from the 
hills. But if we live in God we are 
ever partaking of that crystal stream 
of pure and undefiled religion of which 
the apostle James speaks. 

There is no need of depending on hu- 
7nan instrumentality , We would not 
undervalue this — God has appointed 
it, and set His seal on it. But we 
must ever count it to be a means, and 
not an end. Some sculpture the 
arches of the aqueduct, and festoon 
them, and almost worship them in 
their senseless adulation. But they 
cannot quench the rage of the thirst- 



"C^ere is a Hber 1 " 37 

fever; they are liable to be broken 
down, or stopped up; they may at any 
moment cease affording their wonted 
supplies. Happy are they, therefore, 
who have learnt to go to the river for 
themselves, and to avail themselves at 
first-hand of its supplies. 

The flow of the river is so so/^; such 
a contrast to the tumult of the sea, 
which represents the rage of the foe. 
The waters roar and are troubled, the 
mountains shake with the swelling 
thereof. We can hear the dash of the 
wild waves, the emblem of unbridled 
power, of anarchy and fret and strife, 
of tumult and unrest. Such is the 
world, and such the wicked, who are 
like the troubled sea when it cannot 
rest. What a relief to turn to the 
gentle murmur of the river, whose 
waters glide in musical ripple along 
their banks. The greatest and best 



38 Ci?e ©lortous £or5 

things, in nature and human life and 
God, are stillest. 

The flow of the river is so bountiful. 
" The streams thereof " are the divis- 
ions thereof; as when each Egyptian 
ryot along the Nile draws off its waters 
by the tiny canal into his piece of 
garden ground, or when our house- 
pipes tap the mains. " Unto each 
one of us was the grace given accord- 
ing to the measure of the gift of 
Christ.'* " The same Spirit divides to 
each one severally even as He will." 

The flow of the river is so gladden- 
ing. There is the gladness of perfect 
satisfaction, of security against possible 
need, of peace that passeth under- 
standing, of the infinite repose of the 
soul when it has found its rest. The 
scorching drought may bake the hills 
around, till the landscape pants and 
faints, and every hill is a reflector, and 
every valley a furnace; but the soul 



"Ct?erc is a Xtpec 1/' 39 

which has learnt to avail itself of God 
is glad, because it thirst^ not; it has 
become like a garden, whose waters 
fail not. 

This river is the blessed Spirit. He 
is gentle; He is pure and holy, *clearas 
crystal; He is bountiful. Out of him 
who receives the Spirit, Jesus said, 
"shall flow rivers of living water.'' 
He is joy-giving and glad-making. He 
proceeds from the Father and the Son, 
and with them is to be honored and 
glorified. It was only when the Lamb 
had gone to the throne that the Spirit 
could be given. Directly the Second 
Person of the Holy Trinity took His 
seat at the right hand of the Father, 
as a lamb which had been slain, there 
poured out, as from the smitten rock 
of the wilderness, the abundant river 
whose first head was Pentecost, its 
second Samaria, its third Ephesus, and 
its fourth perhaps will be not far di3- 



40 tri?e ©lortous £orb 

tant, close beside the end of the pres- 
ent age. 

At the beginning of Genesis we read 
of the river that watered the garden, 
and became four heads. This was an 
emblem of things that were to come. 
Already the substance has been given, 
in part perhaps as yet, but destined to 
ever fuller and richer manifestation 
until the perfect realization of its 
entire significance in the ages which 
are awaiting the summons of their 
King. 

In the meanwhile, fellow-believer, in 
the absence of all that others boast 
themselves of possessirfg, be sure that 
there is a river; be sure to find its 
banks, and live there; make much of 
the Holy Ghost, as He speaks in Scrip- 
ture, and breathes through the open 
casement of the soul. 



CHAPTER IV. 
Cf?e Sours XTrue afftnitu. 

Romans vii: i-6. 

Beneath the strong rugged thought 
which runs through chapters vi. and 
vii. of the Epistle to the Romans, we 
do not always detect the tender little 
allegory which connects the two. It 
is perhaps more than an allegory, for 
earthly relationships are probably pat- 
terns of things in the heavens, and 
there are correspondences linking the 
inward with the outward, the unseen 
and eternal with the temporal and 
seen. 

When we are awakened from the 
lethargy and death of sin to seek after 



42 Cl?e ©lorious £or6 

and realize the Divine ideal which calls 
to us, we are first attracted towards 
God's holy law. If only we may enter 
into alliance with it, we suppose that 
we shall easily attain whatsoever 
things are true, pure, lovely, and of 
good report. We are strongly drawn 
to it. As it looks out on us from the 
ten words of Sinai, speaks to us in the 
voice of conscience, or is reflected 
from the pages of a Marcus Aurelius or 
Epictetus, we are fascinated by its 
beauty. It is as when the traveller 
for the first time sees the touch of 
dawn on a line of snow-clad Alps 
struck out sharp against the deep azure 
of heaven. 

The law is holy, just and good. We 
delight in it after the inward man. 
Our judgment approves it, our reason 
vindicates it, our conscience bears 
witness to it, our sense of the fitness 
of things acknowledges its claims. 



Cf?e Soul's Crue affinity 43 

We are able to love it with all our 
mind, if not with all our heart. And 
it seems to us that by constant com- 
panionship we shall necessarily become 
transformed into its sublime and 
heavenly likeness. The soul deems 
that it has found its true affinity. 
There is the daw^n of a new joy, the 
flush of a new hope. 

But this experience is destined to be 
short-lived. There is a fundamental 
incongruity in the alliance. It is not 
that the law is deficient in any of those 
qualities, with which the soul's thought 
had invested it, but that there is an 
everlasting incompatibility between its 
holiness and the manifold weakness 
and sinfulness of the flesh. The law 
is spiritual, but we are carnal; the law 
is perfect, we are sold under sin; the 
law is heavenly, we are of earth, 
earthly. And thus the soul becomes 
aware of its awful mistake, cries out 



44 ^^^ ©lorious Corb 

in the bitterness of its anguish, and 
sighs for deHverance and reHef. The 
dye of its sinfulness seems even deeper 
and darker, because it works death by 
that which is good. The deceitfulness 
of the flesh appears more inveterate, 
because it takes occasion by the com- 
mandment to work all manner of con- 
cupiscence. And yet it seems as 
though nothing can happen to free the 
soul from its union with the law it has 
espoused. 

At this point, when the blackness of 
despair has settled down on the hopes 
and anticipations which the soul had 
so fondly cherished, it awakes to dis- 
cover new and unrealized depths of 
meaning in the Cross, It sees its sin- 
ful flesh nailed there in effigy and like- 
ness. It realizes that we who believe 
have become dead to the law by the 
body of Christ. It understands, that as 
death intervenes between husband and 



Cbe Soul's Crue affinity 45 

wife, dissolving their union by remov- 
ing one into another sphere so that 
each is free of the other, similarly the 
death of Christ, in which we were 
identified, has placed the law and our- 
selves in different spheres, the law be- 
ing left in the earth sphere, whilst we 
have risen into the heavenly and eternal 
one, and thus we are freed from the 
law, " having died to that wherein we 
were held, that we should serve in 
newness of spirit, and not in the old- 
ness of the letter/' 

It is a blessed thing when we appre- 
hend this side of our Saviour's death. 
It YSi for sin certainly; but it is also unto 
sin. We become dead to the law by 
the body of Christ. It is the release of 
death: and the soul, with thankful glad- 
ness, knows that the bonds by which it 
was bound to a relationship it could not 
sustain is forever at an end. The law 
is not dead, or abrogated, or abolished, 



46 Ctje glorious £orb 

but its hold on the soul, as a means of 
justification and sanctification, is for 
ever at an end. There can therefore 
be no charge of disloyalty or unfaith- 
fulness, even though it be married to 
another. 

Then in this new glad life, on Easter 
soil, as a child of the Resurrection, and 
admitted into the realm of the Infinite 
and Eternal, the soul comes on its true 
affinity^ in which it can meet with 
neither disappointment nor dissatisfac- 
tion. It encounters the risen Christ, 
in whom it recognizes Him that died in 
weakness on the Cross, but now lives 
for ever in power and glory, and all its 
nature leaps towards Him as its true 
Spouse and Home. All that attracted 
it before in the law is in Him. Was 
it holy, just and good } So is He ! 
Did it elicit a response from judgment, 
conscience, and sense of fitness } So 
does He! But He has qualities the 



CI?e Sours Crue affinity 47 

law never possessed. He can forgive. 
He has grace to help in time of need. 
He makes no appeal for the obedience 
of the self-life, but promotes the obe- 
dience which He demands. He lifts 
us into a new sphere, secures death to 
self and sin, and indwells by the power 
of the Holy Ghost. 

None can impute to Him any con- 
nivance with our imperfections, frail- 
ties, and sins. They cost Him agony, 
blood, tears, death. There is on His 
part no weak yielding of the lofty ideal 
which seems to mock us, as we lie 
paralyzed at its base. The standard of 
Christ, which is that of Love, is more 
searching and comprehensive than that 
of Law. The spirit asks for more than 
the letter. But His love begets in us 
the love that possesses and energizes 
the soul; His death involves death to 
sinful passions, and to the law as a 
means of righteousness; His Spirit frees 



48 Ct?e Glorious £or6 

us from the power of the self-hfe, and 
fashions us by imperceptible but cer- 
tain stages into the Hkeness of His 
glory. 

The Old Version says we are married 
to another; the Revised Version renders 
it joined to another; the original says 
simply should be for another. What 
sublimity lurks in this simplicity ! In 
life and death, by day and night, in the 
busy haunts of toil, and in its repose, 
to be always and only for that other, 
that glorious Man, in whom truth and 
mercy have met, righteousness and 
peace have kissed. All difficulties 
resolve themselves when brought to this 
touchstone. The eye is single, and 
the whole body is full of light. All sin 
becomes personal disloyalty and infidel- 
ity to the gentlest and truest of Friends. 
All life is animated by the purpose of 
an absorbing love, that yearns for 
nothing so much as to set forth the 



Cl?e Sours Crue (Ifftnitp 49 

praises of Him who fills the entire hori- 
zon of the soul. Thus we bring forth 
fruit unto God. 

The Apostle uses a very strong word 
to describe the service zvhich love pro- 
motes. He says that we serve in new- 
ness of the spirit, and not in the old- 
ness of the letter (vii: 6). It is the serv- 
ice of the slave. There is no slavery 
so absolute as that of love. To pro- 
mote the well-being of the loved one is 
the one aim and purpose of existence. 
The fetters never hurt wrist or ankle, 
because there is no disposition to be 
rebellious or turn away back. Love 
prompts the heart to move in perfect 
accord with the demands that the 
strictest law might formiulate. But be- 
fore law calls, love answers, and every 
need is anticipated before it has time 
to assert itself. The strings of daisies 
which are threaded by a child's fingers 
on the spring-lawns will compel its 



50 Ct?e ©lortous £or5 

mother, with an immediateness and im- 
perativeness which iron and steel could 
not secure. 

It is thus that the Divine law is not 
annulled, but established through the 
work of Christ. Not only does He 
magnify it and make it honorable by 
His own obedience unto death, but He 
secures its supremacy in the hearts of 
those who are joined to Him by faith, 
and receive of His Spirit. What the 
law could not do in that it was weak 
through the flesh, is done through the 
Son Himself. The righteousness of 
the law is fulfilled in us, who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 

But we must be very careful not to 
take advantage of God's free grace. 
The greater our privileges, the deeper 
our responsibility. To whom much is 
given, of such will more be required. 
Love is very exacting in its claims, 



gilje Soul's Crue afftnita 51 

quick in its instincts, awful in its jeal- 
ousy. Let us avoid giving needless 
pain to our faithful Lover, Christ. 



CHAPTER V. 

Cljnst (Dm ano ITTanystbeb* 

ISA. XXVII : 2. 

Life presents the same features to 
the toiUng myriads of England as to 
the dwellers amid the vineyards and 
pastm'e lands of Judah, to w^hom Isaiah 
w^rote when he compared it to the ex- 
periences of a caravan passing across a 
sandy waste. Sometimes it is the si- 
rocco blast of temptation, burning hot; 
the air is laden with particles of grit 
that sting and irritate, and find their 
way through closed doors; thus all day 
long the devil vexes us. Sometimes 
the tempest of trouble rises high; the 
qavilHngs and misjudgmepts of men, 



(£t?nst ®ne anb UTanystbeb 53 

difficulties in daily business, the over- 
whelming competition and strife of our 
time, combine to fill our lives with 
storm. Now we happen on a dry 
place, from which human love seems 
to have retreated, so that no green 
thing breaks the monotony of our pil- 
grimage, no child's embrace, no tender 
caress, no tone or touch of love. And, 
again, we are traversing a weary land; 
we are tired, tired of the inward strife, 
of the daily cross, of the perpetual 
demand on our sympathy and self- 
control, longing for the evening bell, 
and the passage across the harbor-bar 
from the restless sea to the tranquil 
waters of the haven. 

We must not take the pessimist's 
view of life. In every year there are 
more hours of sun than of rain, in all 
lives there are more joys than sorrows. 
For all grief there is an anodyne; for 
all loss there is compensation. Nature 



54 ^h^ (Slortous £or6 

is always beautiful. Troops of fresh 
young lives are ever pouring into our 
w^orld, with their merry laughter and 
their gay frolic. The very work of life 
brings zest and interest; and hope is 
ever painting its bright frescoes on the 
dark cloud that hides the future. And 
yet it is undeniable that there are 
many sad aspects to life which press 
themselves upon our notice, and some- 
times cause heart and flesh to fail. 

Men naturally resort to the readiest 
methods of averting the pressure of 
anxiety and pain. The natural man is 
always looking out for his hiding place, 
the niche in the rock which may serve 
as one. He resorts to a temporary ex- 
pedient which serves him in pressing 
difficulty; but shortly after he is seek- 
ing for a covert against a tornado, which 
all suddenly has broken upon him. 
After a while he is sensible of consum- 
ing thirst, and searches in another 



Cljrtst (Due anb ITTanystbeb 55 

direction for water. And again worn 
by fatigue he looks around for a great 
rock, casting a sharply-defined shadow 
on the burning sand, in whose blue 
depths he may find shelter. Thus man 
is always seeking help in different quar- 
ters to carry him through the pressing 
anxieties and difficulties of his life. 

The children of this world hide them- 
selves under the golden canopy of 
money, which wards off many of the 
grosser forms of evil, but cannot satisfy 
the craving of the heart for love and sym- 
pathy and rest. They yield themselves 
to systems of philosophy that brace men 
to suffer with stoical fortitude and indif- 
ference, as when the weak and boneless 
animal makes for itself the hard shell 
or case that shelters it from collision 
and shock. Or they take refuge in 
some passionate human attachment, 
seeking in man or woman the covert, 
the water-spring, and the shadow of a 



56 Ctje (Slorious £orb 

great rock; a hope which is doomed to 
disappointment, because none is all- 
sided enough to supply another's need 
in the numberless necessities of human 
experience. These are broken cisterns, 
clouds without rain, the mirage with- 
out the fountain, the grate without fire. 
In all true life there is education and 
grozvth. We pass upward from things 
to human sympathy, and seek in men 
and women the comforter we orig- 
inally sought in wealth, or travel, or 
book. Then we pass from the outward 
to the inward, from the finite to the in- 
finite, from the time sphere to the 
eternal. We start back appalled at 
the insufficiency of the tenderest human 
love to meet the exhaustless hunger of 
our souls, and long for the Divine in 
human form, presented to us in the 
Man. Finally there comes a great 
unity into our life, and having found 
the Man in whom all the fulness of the 



Ctjrtst One anb ITcanystbeb 57 

Godhead dwells, having realized some- 
thing of what He can be to the soul 
that He made and redeemed, we return 
again to men and things, and find in 
them a beauty and fitness which we had 
never realized before. Nature wears a 
lovelier dress, because the Man, whom 
we love, arrayed her, and her hues and 
scents are borrowed from His thought. 
Children are lovelier, because they re- 
flect traits of His character. All true 
thoughts are more satisfying, because 
we detect in them the intonations of His 
voice. Earthly friendships are trans- 
figured, because as we lift them to our 
lips they brim with water from the 
fountain of His love; and the com- 
monest incidents of life are invested 
with unwonted meaning, because all 
things are of Him, and through Him, 
and to Him forever. 

For the Christian^ only one Being is 
needful There is a blessed unity in 



58 d?e (Slorious £or6 

his life. He desires only the Man of 
whom Isaiah spoke, the Man that trod 
the soil of Palestine, that died upon 
the cross, that lives in the glory, the 
Man Christ Jesus. Jesus is the one 
answer to every question, the one sat- 
isfaction of every desire. To the 
Apostles the Master was all in all. In 
Him they found strength for spiritual 
conflict, defence from their foes, ten- 
derness amid rebuke and reproach, rest 
in weariness; and Jesus Christ is will- 
ing to be as much and more to all who 
believe on Him through their word. 
During His earthly life. He was the 
one answer to all the aches and ills of 
human bodies. Blindness, paralysis, 
demon possession, found their antidote 
in His Presence, His name. His touch. 
And He is still all-sufficient to meet 
each demand now of the spiritual, as 
then of the physical life. 

All we require for this life and the 



(Etjrist ®ne anb Zltanysibeb 59 

7texf IS ours in Christ, We are, alas, 
too slow to possess our possessions. 
Do we need a shelter from the sirocco 
of temptation ? We may find it in 
Jesus. Hiding behind Him, taking ref- 
uge in the pavilion of His Presence, 
we are secure. Put the Man Christ 
Jesus between you and temptation or 
adverse circumstances, as the Roman 
soldier his shield between him and the 
fiery darts of the foe. In days of 
tempest He is the impenetrable covert. 
In loneliness He is like the murmur of 
waters in a dry place. In weariness 
He is the shadow of a great rock, be- 
neath which we may sit with great de- 
light. In other words Jesus Christ is 
the one answer of the soul to every 
possible circumstance, to all emergen- 
cies, to the demands and appeals that 
constantly knock at the door of our 
life, like the telegraph lad with the 



6o Cl?e (Slortous iovb 

buff-colored envelope, and its unex- 
pected summons. 

There is something more. The soul 
that abides in Christ extracts blessings 
from the repeated discipline which 
reveals the many-sidedness of Christ. 
It greets sirocco and tornado; it wel- 
comes drought and weariness; it re- 
joices in tribulation; because out of all 
these things it is acquiring an experi- 
ence of qualities and attributes which 
otherwise had slumbered in Christ un- 
known. Human need has always been 
the background for the revelation of 
God's nature, as the ailments of a 
child reveal the tender patience of the 
mother, and as the virulence of dis- 
ease the resource of doctor or nurse. 
You asked to know Him, then be not 
surprised if you are placed on steep 
standpoints of vision whence unex- 
pected glimpses of His nature may be 
obtained. 



Cl}vxst ®ne anb lltanystbeb 6i 

No^ ttnfrequently men teach us zvhat 
the Man can be. They are but broken 
lights of Him. SpHnters from the 
crystal, drops from the fountain. One 
setting forth this trait, and another 
that of His character, but none of them 
able to combine more than one, or at 
the most two, of those characteristics 
which the prophet attributes to the 
Man whose praises he recites. They 
are coverts, but not hiding-places; or 
hiding-places, but not rivers; or rivers, 
but not shadowing rocks. Take the best 
of the best of men; gather into one all 
the chivalry, bravery, tenderness, love- 
liness, which have dwelt in the fairest 
of our race; and all together will not 
suffice to depict the comprehensive- 
ness, and glory, and sufficiency of the 
Son of Man. 

It should be our ambition so to live 
that men may catch glimpses of Christ 
in us, so that they may say, if this 



62 Ct?e ©lorious £orb 

man or this woman is so strong and 
sweet, so true and tender, what must 
not He be, in whom their virtues dwell 
as their home ? And for ourselves, 
such may be our fellowship with Christ, 
that we shall be less sensitive to the 
transitions and trials of our mortal life. 
There shall be no more sirocco, or 
waterless waste, or unbearable heat, 
because in having Him, we shall be 
shielded in Him. These great modern 
cities will become in our eyes as fair as 
lands of perennial spring; and sad, 
homeless, desolate hearts become more 
sensible of their possessions than of 
their losses, of the One Presence than 
of the absence of any. " Our sun 
shall no more go down, neither shall 
our moon withdraw itself, for the Lord 
shall be to us an everlasting light, and 
the days of our mourning shall be 
ended." 



CHAPTER VI. 

^ovo to Become £tke Cbrist 

2 Cor. iii: i8. 

Many are seeking the true policy of 
life. But in all directions there is per- 
plexity and confusion; either men are 
living at haphazard or are adopting 
a policy dictated by selfishness and 
worldly wisdom. On all sides the ques- 
tion is being asked, What is life ? 
Whither is the hurrying current bear- 
ing us ? How shall we make the best 
of the short interval between the cradle 
and the grave ? What thread of all 
the many that offer themselves to our 
hand will conduct us through the laby- 
rinth with its darkness into the light ? 



64 CI?e ®Iortou$ £or6 

"What shall we do?'* is a question 
often put. 

The clue to life's aims; the philoso- 
pher's stone which will turn everything 
into gold; the secret of a blessed useful 
life is to be found much rather in what 
we are^ than in what we do. The 
Beatitudes with which our Lord opened 
the great programme of Christianity all 
turn upon character rather than upon 
action, and the blessedness which He 
promises is to the meek, the pure in 
heart, the peacemaker. The true policy 
of life, therefore, is to stay just where 
we are; to believe that to be what and 
where we are is God's will for us; and 
to endeavor to be the noblest, sweet- 
est, purest, strongest possible. Not to 
fret because the sphere is obscure; not 
to be jealous of the position occupied 
by others; not to allow the peace of 
the inner life to be broken by the fever- 
ish desire to be something else; but 



^ott) to Become Cike (£Ijrtst 65 

to be quiet, evincing all that nobility 
of disposition and character which the 
opportunity and occasion call for. For 
men to be strong, thoughtful, consid- 
erate of women and of the weak, tender 
to little children, self-controlled, able 
to command the tides that sweep 
through heart and thought. For women 
to be pure and devout, gentle and 
modest, adorned with the jewels of the 
meek and quiet spirit, which in God's 
sight is of great price; and to be this 
constantly, in days of fog as well as 
of sunshine, of illness as of buoyant 
strength; this surely will extract from 
the roughest and most toilsome path 
the largest amount of blessedness that 
this world can give." 

John Stuart Mill was accustomed to 
say that whenever the path of his life 
was not clear, he was accustomed to 
ask what Jesus of Nazareth would 
probably have done under the same 



66 Cf?e (Slortous £or6 

circumstances, and that the test never 
failed to indicate the true course to 
adopt; and for us there is surely no 
higher ideal of life than to ask perpetu- 
ally — what would Jesus do were He in 
my place ? Each one of us must have 
an ideal by which to mould our life, 
and there is no such ideal as that pre- 
sented to us in the life of our blessed 
Lord. To 'be like Christ is to know 
something of the joy and peace that 
perennially filled His heart. 

There is a great necessity that we 
should be all this, because knowledge 
depends on character; we know, only 
when we are willing to do His will. 
The light of the morning will only 
illumine our mind when we have fol- 
lowed the narrow path of obedience up 
the steep ascent of righteousness and 
truth. Many ask what is the right 
policy of life with the intention of being 
nobler and purer so soon as they clearly 



E}ovo to Become £tke Christ 67 

see how to live. Such are destined 
to disappointment. The only solution 
to life's many problems is to begin at 
once, just where we are, to be what 
God demands of us, assured that 
soon we shall learn all that He would 
teach us. 

But how can we become Christ-like ? 
The answer is given in a significant 
text, which has been illuminated with 
a new beauty in the Revised Version 
— ." We all with unveiled face, reflect- 
ing as a mirror the glory of the Lord, 
are transformed into the same image, 
from glory to glory." 

We all. There is no monopoly in 
the religion of Jesus Christ. Its doors 
stand open for all who will enter. No 
inner circle, no privileged class, no 
school of initiates. What was possible 
for Moses in the old dispensation, and 
for him alone, is free to us all, to the 
rank and file of the Church as well as 



68 ^{?e (Slortous Sorb 

to the Apostles, to the eighteenth cen- 
tury as well as the first. 

With unveiled face. We are told 
that Moses veiled his face, partly be- 
cause the people could not stand its 
dazzling light, and partly because he 
wished to hide from them its dwindling 
glory (verse 13). And his veil was 
afterwards spread upon the hearts of 
the Jews, who could not see the spirit- 
ual beauty of their own law, because 
they were hardened. But there must 
be no veil of prejudice, or unbelief, or 
permitted sin upon the face which is 
turned towards the Son of God. With 
the clear, undimmed gaze of purity 
and truth, we must look into His. 

Reflecting as a mirror. In the older 
version, "Beholding as in a glass,*' 
which had a helpful and deep signifi- 
cance; but surely this is even yet more 
helpful, as it is truer to the Apostle*s 
phrase. We are to reflect Jesus as the 



£}ovo to Become £tke (Efjrtst 69 

mirror does the face and movements of 
the person in whose apartment it 
stands. Silent and unobtrusive; con- 
stantly and faithfully, it reflects every 
gesture; so the Christian heart should 
live in daily, hourly fellov^ship with the 
face of Jesus Christ. As the eyes of 
servants are to the hand of their mas- 
ter, so our eyes should be directed 
towards, and our lives perpetually re- 
flecting, our Lord, whom the world 
cannot see, but who is ever present to 
the eye of our faith. 

As Jesus looks into our lives, in their 
pellucid depths He should see His own 
face reflected. Yea, as God the Father 
looks down upon us *He should see a 
faithful reflection of His Son. And as 
the giddy world around casts casual 
glances at the people of God they 
should be arrested, not so much by 
what they say as by the features of the 
Master which they present. Perhaps 



70 d?e glorious Corb 

each unit in the Church is needed to 
mirror, to the world some trait or feat- 
ure of Emmanuel. Each believer 
should daily ask himself, " What do 
my companions and associates see of 
Christ in me ? " and the supreme test 
of every action should be, " How can 
I so conduct myself as to reveal some 
trait of my Master's character ? " 
Whatever it may cost it should be the 
ambition of each lover of Christ to 
transmit perpetually the beauty of the 
Lord, so that others may admire Him 
in them that believe. 

Ask how Christ is acting; always re- 
peat what He is doing; do nothing of 
yourself; whatsoever He doeth, do it 
likewise; make all things of the pat- 
tern shown to the eye of faith upon 
the Mount; act thus, not because you 
wish to, or like to, or feel pleasure in 
it, but because you ought, and thus in- 
stinctively, and unconsciously you will 



i^ow to Become £tke Ctjrtst 71 

really become like Christ. The like- 
ness of Christ will pass from the out- 
ward act and speech, in which there 
may be some effort, to the inner tem- 
per and disposition of the soul. Put 
on the Lord Jesus Christ by daily ap- 
propriating the grace of His character, 
and that grace will become indigenous 
to the soil of your heart. We are 
transformed. This is the word used of 
the Transfiguration of Christ. We 
too shall have a transfiguration; not 
as His, a sudden and immediate change, 
but one that will grow on us from day 
to day, too gradual to be noticed save 
by comparisons that stretch over years. 
Act like Christ, and you will increas- 
ingly come to think and feel like Him. 
But none of this is possible save by 
the grace of the Holy Spirit. He first 
implants the desire for the holy life, 
and leads us to live nearer Christ, and 
enables us to resemble Him, and works 



72 C^e ©lortous £or5 

in us the the inward temper and dis- 
position. From beginning to end the 
grace of the Christian Hfe is due to 
the Blessed Spirit, and when once He 
takes the soul in hand, there is no fear 
that the work will retrograde or be 
dimmed, as the light that faded from 
the face of Moses; rather it will pro- 
ceed, by insensible degrees, from glory 
to glory, and we shall see in each other 
more and more of the character and 
beauty of the Risen and Ascended 
Master. 

But there is something yet to be 
said. The Lord Jesus is in the heart 
of each believer, by the grace of the 
Holy Spirit. The perfect image may 
be in embryo, wrapped up as a forest 
tree in acorn or seed, but it is certainly 
present. And each time we are called 
upon to resemble Christ, to act or 
speak as He would have done, to re- 
flect Him to men, we have to deal not 



£}ow to Become £tke (Etjrtst 73 

only with the Christ of the throne, but 
the Christ of the heart. Let us make 
way, so that the Christ in us may speak 
or act through us; so that the image 
without may be reproduced, not simply 
by reflection, but by indwelling and 
outshining. 



CHAPTER VII. 
^I)e immanence of (£I;rtst 

Our religion is deeper than is com- 
monly supposed. It is a great loss in 
every way that we are accustomed to 
speak of faith in Christ, forgiveness, 
and cleansing from sin as if they were 
the crown and climax of Christianity, 
instead of being its outworks, its outer- 
courts, the staircases and corridors to 
its throne-room, its reparative pro- 
cesses preparatory to its essential life 
and heart. Christianity fails of its 
chief end in any life that it affects, un- 
less it produces there, so far as may be 
possible, the life of the Eternal God 
Himself, as it is resident in Jesus 



Cf?e immanence of Cf?rtst 75 

Christ and communicated by the Holy 
Spirit. 

In regeneration, at whatever time it 
takes place, and under whatever circum- 
stances, the principle of a new life is 
inserted in the human spirit. As the 
animal has a higher life than the plant, 
and as man, in his moral nature, has 
a higher life than the animal, so the 
man who has been regenerated by the 
Spirit of God has become possessed of 
a life to which the ordinary man can 
lay no claim. He has become, as the 
Apostle Peter puts it, " a partaker of 
the Divine nature." Whatever be our 
differences as to creed or Church, they 
are comparatively unimportant, so long 
as we possess within our spirits this 
Divine life, which is Christ in us, the 
hope of glory. " Know ye not," said 
the Apostle, as though it were an 
anomaly to be ignorant of this primal 



76 Ctje Glorious £orb 

fact, " that Jesus Christ is in you, ex- 
cept ye be reprobates ? " 

The whole scheme of redemption, 
the entire work of Jesus Christ, His 
birth in which He brought the Divine 
under the conditions of the human, His 
death by which He acquired power to 
pass it on, His resurrection and ascen- 
sion through which He bor^ it regnant 
and triumphant to the throne. His gift 
of the Holy Spirit by which He makes 
it available to all who believe — all 
tend to this as their flower and fruit, 
that He should reproduce Himself in 
us. And if year by year we are not be- 
coming more pure and strong and 
Christ-like, we may gravely question 
whether we have not deceived our- 
selves in thinking that we have re- 
ceived Him into our nature. 

The true seat of the Divine indwell- 
ing is the spirit. We are rather lax 
in our use of terms, and fail to divide 



C^e immanence of CI?nst tj 

between soul and spirit. In clear and 
accurate thinking on these deep mat- 
ters we should conceive of the soul as 
the seat of the ego, of our individual- 
ity, and of all the attributes of thought 
and love, of hope and imagination, 
with which we are endowed; but the 
spirit in man is the Holy of Holies of 
his nature, the inner shrine, the natural 
residence and resort of the Spirit of 
God, with whom it has a native affinity. 
We worship God in the spirit. Prob- 
ably the heart is the Hebrew correla- 
tive in the Old Testament of the spirit 
in the New. 

There, in the spirit of man, in depths 
below the play of self-consciousness 
and energy and emotion, in the temple 
of the inner life, the Divine life liter- 
ally dwells. Strengthened by might 
through the Spirit in the inner man, 
Christ dwells in our hearts by faith; 
and as the discipline of life proceeds 



78 CI?e glorious Corb 

He is increasingly formed within us. It 
is a great moment in a man's life when 
this conception first breaks on him, or 
to adopt the Apostle's phrase, when 
God reveals it to him. He suddenly 
awakens to the fact that he has within 
him that eternal life which was in the 
Father, and was manifested to the 
world in His Son, and is now com- 
municated by the Spirit. Bitter and 
deep are the regrets that he has not 
recognized it before, that he has been 
too monopolized by the play of his 
own life to give way to its holy 
promptings and inspirations. It is as 
though a man who for years has 
been working some heavy machinery 
by hand-power, at great strain and 
cost to himself, should suddenly awake 
to find that in his factory for years 
there has been a handle which, had he 
but touched it, would have connected 
his machine with a powerful dynamo, 



Ct?e 3mmanence of (£t?rtst 79 

and would have saved him all his ex- 
penditure. 

Wc must distinguisJi between the 
conception of the Christ-ideal, or the 
enthnsiasvi of the Chinst-spirit, and 
the literal indwelling of the Son of 
God, through the Holy Spirit, In all 
ages the minds of men have been 
sensitive to influences like these. 
Some lofty ideal, like that of the Vir- 
gin Mother, which inspired the knight- 
errants of the Middle Ages; some Di- 
vine enthusiasm, like that which led 
the rich and high-born to abjure all 
that they might resemble Christ in His 
lowliness and poverty — such lofty in- 
spirations have visited and possessed 
men, nerving them to sublime and 
heroic lives. But these do not fulfill 
the measure of this conception, that 
Christ is actually resident in the regen- 
erated soul. They may proceed from 
that indwelling, but they have existed 



8o Ct/e Glorious £or6 

apart from it, and in comparison with 
it they are as artificial flowers to the 
exquisite texture and fragrance of the 
sweet nurselings of spring. 

We cannot understand it. It is, as 
St. Paul says, a great mystery. But 
then all life is mysterious, and what- 
ever is connected with God is myste- 
rious to us. We might well question 
whether our religion were of God, if 
it did not touch on regions of mys- 
tery, if its paths did not after a while 
become tracks on the illimitable ex- 
panse of His being, presently fading 
from view. But we have all learnt 
to distinguish between mysteries we 
cannot solve and facts we gladly rec- 
ognize and accept. We know not 
what life is. We sit beside our dy- 
ing friend until the death-rattle or 
the gentle sigh announces that life is 
gone, but what is it that goes out } 
What is the life which we possess 



trt?e immanence of (£t}nst 8i 

when we live, and lose when we die ? 
These are questions we cannot answer, 
but we still accept the fact of life 
throbbing within ourselves or our fel- 
lows. And thus we think of the mys- 
tery of Christ's indwelHng; it baffles 
thought or speech, but we reverently 
accept it as a fact, and as we do so 
we find that it explains many another 
fact in our own consciousness, and in 
the history of the Church. It should, 
however, be our aim to yield to this 
life as far as possible. We must not 
be content with knowing that within 
the chambers of our heart there dwells 
this Mysterious Guest, m whom all 
wisdom and strength and love reside; 
we must often tread the corriders that 
lead to His apartment, consult with 
Him, interchange ideas and thoughts, 
lay before Him our intentions, pur- 
poses, and plans; nay, we must ask 
Him to step forth into the dwelling of 



82 Clje ©lortous £or6 

the soul, tenanting every room, and 
affecting even the members of the 
body with the glow^ and radiance of 
His presence. 

Two things are needful before we 
can realize the full benefit of this In- 
dwelling: (i) We must curtail the 
manifestation of our own eitergy. 
This is by no means easy. Our Lord 
spoke of it as the daily cross, as lay- 
ing down our lives, as losing our very 
souls, for the word translated soul is 
really life. We fight hard to hold our 
own; we have planned, managed, 
wrought so long that we are inapt in 
reining in our self-life, so that the 
Christ-life may become dominant. We 
are willing enough to adopt any theory 
of life that gives foothold to the spirit 
of self still to keep the government of 
our lives in its hands, such as the 
rightness of strict obedience to the law 
and spirit of Christ. We are willing 



Ct?e 3mmanence of Cljrtst 83 

that He should be constitutional mon- 
arch, if only a religious self may be 
His executive. 

But whatever partakes of self is in- 
imical to our true interests. We must 
stand aside. There cannot be tw^o 
dominant principles w^ithin us. One 
must give v^ay. John the Baptist must 
decrease if Christ is to increase. The 
marble must be chipped off if the fash- 
ion of the image is to grow^. The first 
Adam, who is but a living soul, must 
give place to the second Adam, who is 
a life-giving spirit. 

All this needs constant watchfulness. 
Whenever we are sensible of the forth- 
putting of energy, we must be on the 
alert that its source should not be self, 
but Christ; and that its one purpose 
should be to manifest Him more per- 
fectly, and to attract to Him more of 
the admiration and love of men. There 
is no merit in the deepest self-denial, 



84 CI?e (Slortous Corb 

We do not lop off the branches, shoots, 
and tendrils of our own life because of 
any virtue in the act, but only to cur- 
tail anything that might drain the ener- 
gies of our nature away from the Christ 
graft, or interfere to the least degree 
with the manifestation of Christ's own 
royal and glorious Being. 

(2) We must have times of silence^ of 
waitiitg only upon God, of retiring from 
the murmur and hubbub of human 
voices, that the still, small voice may be 
able to make itself heard. Such hours 
are not lost. We are arrested from tak- 
ing paths which otherwise we should 
have to retrace with slow and weary 
steps. We escape the useless expendi- 
ture of energy which we might better 
conserve. We become conscious of 
the rising up within of that great foun- 
tain of life, which^ having come from 
God, proceeds to God, and that bears us 
forward, like Mary, to do the one great 



CI?e 3mmanence of Cl^rtst 85 

act of self-sacrifice which Hves when the 
many things of the busthng Martha 
hfe are forgotten. 

It may not be necessary Hterally to sit 
still, or to go apart from the ordinary 
avocations of life, in order to detect 
this voice. The boiler-makers can talk 
to each other amid ceaseless hammer- 
ings. Those who are accustomed to 
the roar of Niagara are sensitive to 
noises that would not be audible to the 
unaccustomed ear. So, when once we 
have caught the tone of the voice of 
God, we shall detect it amid the rush 
of daily business. We shall make a 
great stillness in our heart, enter the 
inner temple, and wait there, until the 
word of the Lord shall come to us; and 
all the while to the eyes of our fellows 
we shall be busy with the occupations 
and amenities of life. 

The. one aim, however, of existence 
should be to give an opportunity to the 



86 Cf?e ©lorious Corb 

indwelling Lord to assert Himself, and 
possess the entire realm of spirit, soul 
and body, so that we may in our meas- 
ure be able to say with the Apostle, 
" Daily delivered to death for Jesus' 
sake, that the life of Jesus may be 
manifest in our mortal flesh." 



CHAPTER V 1 1 1. 

tEI?e ®tl?er Ctbpocate* 

John xiv: i6. 

" Another Comforter," or paraclete, 
the Master said. The Church has two 
Advocates— the one with the Father 
in heaven, Jesus Christ the Righteous, 
the other in her midst, for " we have 
been builded together as an habitation 
of God through the Spirit/* "Ye," 
said the Apostle, speaking of the 
Church collectively, " are the temple 
of the Holy Ghost." When the one 
Advocate went up, the other came 
down to be to each believer, and to 
the whole Church, all that the Lord 
Jesus would have been had the niinis- 



88 Cf?e (glorious £orb 

try of the forty days been indefinitely 
prolonged. This is the secret of 
prayer; by the Spirit in the heart we 
are brought into living sympathy with 
the Saviour on the throne, and we. 
naturally ask those things which it is 
the will of God to give. 

There is a remarkable parallel be- 
tween the Advents of the Second and 
Third Persons of the Holy Trinity, 
The Lord Jesus was, of course, in ex- 
istence before His incarnation; yea, 
more, His delights were with the sons 
of men, and He wrought amongst 
them as the Angel-Jehovah; but at 
Bethlehem He entered into union with 
our nature. So the Holy Spirit 
wrought in the hearts of holy men be- 
fore the Day of Pentecost, moving 
them to write the Scriptures, and to 
do great deeds of holy courage, but at 
Pentecost, in an especial manner, Hq 
entered into union with the Church, 



Cf?e ®tf?er abvocak 89 

What the manger-bed was to the one, 
the upper room was to the other. And 
now the Holy Spirit is as certainly im- 
manent in the Body of which Christ is 
Head, as Jesus was immanent in the 
Body born of the Virgin Mother. 

Of course, as the Church is made up 
of individual believers, the immanence 
of the Divine Spirit in the whole de- 
pends on His immanence in each. 
And His indwelling in any individual 
spirit is necessarily productive of all 
manner of Christ-forming, sin-destroy- 
ing, grace-producing results. Holiness 
is the inevitable outcome of the in- 
dwelling of the Holy Ghost when He 
is permitted entire and undisputed 
supremacy. Of these our space for- 
bids more than this mere mention, as 
we wish only to enumerate the special 
functions of the Spirit of God in re- 
spect of the Church's mission in tjie 
world, 



90 Cl?e ©lortous Corb 

The Anointing Function. 

Here, too, there is a remarkable 
parallel between the experiences of 
Christ and of His Church. Not only 
was He conceived of the Holy Ghost, 
but when the long preparatory period 
had passed, He was anointed for His 
work as the great Servant of God. He 
stooped to associate Himself with sin- 
ners by submitting to baptism in the 
swellings of Jordan, and immediately 
the Spirit of God, who had been in 
Him, descended upon Him, and He 
was able to say, " The Spirit of 
the Lord is upon Me because he hath 
anointed Me to preach." This was 
our Saviour's Pentecost, the hour in 
which He was indued with power, 
and was filled by the Spirit, not by 
measure, but in inimitable abundance. 

Similarly, when the Church, which, 
so to speak, had been conceived of the 



trf?e 0t(jer dbvocak 91 

Holy Ghost, was essaying to undertake 
her great mission to the world, to 
preach the Gospel to the poor, to pro- 
claim liberty to the captive, the open- 
ing of the prison to the bound, she, 
too, was anointed for her work. Not 
a step might she stir, though the 
world was knocking at her doors, till 
she had been thus endued with power 
from on high. 

Ever since then the Risen Christ has 
been anointing and enduing men. The 
oil which has been so copiously poured 
on the head of our Aaron descends to 
each fragment of His sacred dress that 
claims the sacred chrism. The Lord 
received the Holy Ghost as an individ- 
ual at the Jordan, but He received 
Him again, so Peter tells us, when He 
ascended up on high, and this time as 
our Head and Representative (Acts ii: 
33). He has been infilled that He 
may infil; anointed that He may 



92 Cf?e glorious Corb 

anoint; endued that He may endue. 
Though in all this it must be remem- 
bered that we are not now touching on 
His Divine Nature, but on His office 
as the High Priest of His Church. As 
a river pouring over a mountain-side 
fills the large tarns and lakes below, so 
the nature of God pours into the 
Divine human nature of the Son, and 
so by the Spirit into all hearts that by 
faith claim His infilling. 

His Administering Function. 

Throughout the Book of the Acts, 
we find that the Holy Ghost is the 
prime mover and administrator. He 
said to Peter, " Three men seek for 
thee, go with them, I have sent them "; 
He said, " Separate me Barnabus and 
Saul"; He controlled the movements 
of the Apostle, " the Spirit of J-esus 
suffered them not "; He was so evi- 



Ct?e (Dtl?er Ctbpocate 93 

dently present in the Church, that the 
first official document ran thus: " It 
seemed good to the Hoi/ Ghost, and 
to us." He struck down those that 
lied against His Divine Majesty. These 
are instances out of many. Indeed, 
there is not a chapter in the Acts 
which does not contain some reference 
to the administrative function of the 
Holy Ghost. 

And what was true of the early 
Church has been true in the history of 
the universal Church in every age, and 
might be true of each separate one. 
My beloved friend, the late Dr. Gor- 
don, to long talks with whom on this 
subject I owe so much, once told me 
that in his earlier ministry he was more 
anxious to administer and guide his 
church than in later years. He found 
that he was attempting work which 
the Holy Spirit could do better. It 
was enough, therefore, to preach per- 



94 ^f?^ ©lorious £or6 

petually on the work of the Holy 
Spirit, to keep his people's minds 
directed towards it, and to believe that 
the Spirit Himself would energize 
through the church to the perfect real- 
izing of all its possibilities. 

The Co-operating Function. 

A scientific lecturer often employs 
the services of a demonstrator, who, 
by the experiments he performs, or 
the figures he chalks on the black- 
board, presents to the eye what the 
speaker is presenting to the ear. This 
co-operation is like the double lens of 
the binocular glass, and the impression 
of the conjoint witness is proportion- 
ately great. So, ever since the day of 
Pentecost, when a servant of Christ has 
stood up in the right condition of soul 
and in believing fellowship with the 
Divine Spirit, He has been a fellow- 



Cf?e (Dtf?er abpocate 95 

witness to the Gospel. " We are wit- 
nesses of these things, and so is also 
the Holy Ghost:' 

Whilst the servant of God is elabo- 
rating and enforcing the truth disclosed 
to him through the Bible, at the mo- 
ment that he is speaking the Spirit of 
God is at work, convicting of sin, 
righteousness, and judgment, demon- 
strating the truth of what is advanced, 
and driving the arrow home in the 
joints of the harness. It is a mistake, 
therefore, to argue for the Gospel; it is 
better far to bear witness to it. This 
is our function. " Ye shall be wit- 
nesses unto Me." But it is highly im- 
portant that we present Christ in His 
Gospel. The Spirit is not bound to 
add His testimony to aught else. Not 
to bursts of eloquence, nor to reams 
of essays on the last strike, nor to 
philosophy and science, but to the truth 
as it is in Jesus, is the Spirit responsive. 



96 CI?e ©lorious £or6 

If once a man learns to rely on this, 
it makes him wonderfully calm and 
still. His fury and passion will not 
effect his purpose, but if he really 
knows "the communion," or partner- 
ship, "of the Holy Spirit," that will 
answer all. 

His Upbuilding Function. 

Between the first and second Advents 
God is forming a new humanity. The 
Head was constituted in the incarna- 
tion, but especially in the death and res- 
urrection of the Second Adam. The 
Body is being added, soul by soul. It 
is worth our while to give full meaning 
to the phrase, " Believers were the 
more added to the Lord'' (Acts v: 14). 
They were, of course, added to the 
Church, but before that they had been 
added to the Lord. They were added 
to the Church because they had been 
added to the Lord. 



Ctje 0tt?er Cibvocak 97 

This is a special function of the Holy 
Spirit to attract and draw men to the 
Head. He does this through the 
Church. Thus the Body of Christ is 
being built up. In the purpose of God 
we may say, as David did of his natural 
body, " In Thy book all my members 
were written, which in continuance 
were fashioned." That is the point; 
the members of the Lord's mystical 
body are being fashioned in continuance : 
and as each new fragment is added, it 
becomes the vehicle or channel through 
which the energy of the Holy Ghost 
passes to incorporate still more. 

His Revealing Function. 

The one aim of the Blessed Spirit is 
to glorify the Saviour, as the aim of 
the Saviour was to glorify the Father. 
The very expressions that were appli- 
cable in this connection to the Lord 



98 CI?e (Slortous £or6 

are equally so to the Spirit. Compare, 
for instance, these two remarkable sen- 
tences: " I have not spoken from My- 
self/* and " He shall not speak from 
Himself. '* 

If we may so speak, the Holy Spirit 
shrinks from drawing attention to Him- 
self. He is gladdest when all the light 
that He can focus shines full on the 
face of Jesus, and men are taken up 
with Him. All that detracts from the 
pre-eminence of Christ in the heart- 
life and thought-life of His people is an 
immense grief to Him whose mission is 
to glorify Him by taking of the things 
that are His, and revealing them to 
those who love. The life which is 
most pervaded by the Spirit of Jesus 
will have most of the beauty of His 
character reflected in it. And the 
spirit which is really Spirit-filled will 
talk more of the Lord Jesus than of the 



Ctje ©tfjer dbvocah 99 

Gracious Agent, whose joy is to reveal 
Him, and to be Himself unseen. 

Our individual paracletism through 
these priceless functions v^ill be in pro- 
portion as we learn the meaning of 
Gal. iii: 14. " That we might receive 
the promise of the Spirit by faith,'' 
Not by long vigils, nor by prolonged 
fastings and prayers, nor with a storm 
of emotion, and the witness of sense, 
but calmly, quietly, and through faith 
we may receive all God intends in any 
of these directions; not once or twice, 
but repeatedly; not spasmodically, but 
continuously; not emotionally, but by 
the adjusted attitude of the conse- 
crated will. 



CHAPTER IX. 

(Escape from t^e WotWs Corruption. 

2 Peter. 

In no sparing terms, the sacred 
writers refer to the world of their time. 
And to this rule the Epistles of Peter 
are no exception. There is no kind 
of excess with which he does not 
charge it. The words lasciviousness, 
lust, and excess of riot, come with sad 
monotony from his lips. Indeed, the 
conception of the Second Epistle likens 
it to Sodom, on which the lawless 
deeds of the wicked brought the swift 
judgment of God. 

But with equal clearness he defines 
the position of those whom he ad- 



(£scape from (Lorruptton loi 

dressed, and who had obtained a like 
precious faith with himself. If the 
world of their time were another 
Sodom, they at least were as righteous 
Lot, distressed with the lascivious life 
of the wicked, whom the Lord deliv- 
ered. Would that he had realized and 
maintained the life to which the Al- 
mighty God called him ! Then he 
had enjoyed the free, glad life of the 
uplands, where Abraham walked with 
God! 

Having escaped! (2 Peter i: 4). How 
positive this assertion ! There at the 
foot of the cliffs the waves of ink wel- 
ter, and yonder the bark is slowly 
going to pieces, but the crew have 
escaped safe to shore, and, climbing 
the rocky ledges, are standing far be- 
yond the angry whirl of the waves, and 
the furthest cast of the spray. Not 
more absolutely does the Apostle John 
speak of those who have gotten the 



I02 Cf?e glorious £or6 

victory over the beast, than does this 
Apostle describe the escape from the 
corruption of the world, of those who 
were likely to survive him, and to 
whom he entrusted words that might 
help them when he had gone. They 
stood in the light, where darkness 
could not include them in its sable em- 
pire: they breathed air, in which the 
germs of contagion could not live: they 
were surrounded as by a cordon of 
fire, through which temptation could 
not pass. 

Just escaping {^w i8, R. v.). In the 
case of some, the escape was in pro- 
cess. They had heard the warning 
cry of the angels, felt the eager press- 
ure of their hastening hands, and had 
arisen to flee from them that were liv- 
ing in error, steeped in unconscious- 
ness, solaced by the lullaby of a false 
peace. It is a great spectacle to behold 
the awakening of a soul to love, or 



(Escape from Corruption 103 

thought, or some noble conception of 
the possibilities of life, but it is a greater 
one to watch it just escaping, passing 
the city-gates in the early dawn, as the 
sun is rising on the earth, or beginning 
to climb the mountain slopes to the 
shelter of the cave. 

After they have escaped the defile- 
ments of the world . . . again entangled 
therein and overcome (ii: 20). This is 
a sad possibility that must ever be 
borne in mind. We are never saved 
in this world beyond the fear of relapse. 
Lot escaped Sodom's doom, but he 
was entangled again in her sin^, and 
contracted eternal infamy. Many have 
emerged from the black waves, stood 
for a little on the cliffs of chrysolite, 
where the morning light ever shines, 
but have been sucked back into the re- 
morseless waters. Let him that think- 
eth he stands take heed lest he fall. 
Life is full of perils, and not least so 



I04 Ctje (Slorious £or6 

for those who vaunt their deliverance. 
Our salvation depends on our perpet- 
ual reception of the life and grace of 
the Lord Jesus, and if there is any in- 
termission here, there will be inevitable 
decrepitude and failure everywhere, 
and the tempter will easily break into 
the citadel of the soul. 

The method of escape is always al- 
luded to in the same phrase. It must 
be through the knowledge of Him that 
hath called us. We must not be idle 
or unfruitful in the knowledge of our 
Lord Jesus Christ; we can only escape 
the defilements of the world through the 
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ; we must grow in the 
grace and knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ (i: 3, 8; ii: 20; iii: 
18). To know the second Man, who 
has undone the havoc of the first; to 
know Him as Jesus, tempted in all 
points like as we are, though without 



(Escape from Corruption 105 

sin; to know Him as Christ, the 
Anointed of the Father; to know Him 
as Lord, the enthroned King of the 
heart — these are the conditions on 
which to know Him as Saviour, 
through whose grace the soul may be 
deHvered from the evil of sin, and 
know the way of righteousness. Well 
may we exclaim with Peter's beloved 
brother Paul, that I may know, Him ! 
The believing, adoring, experimental 
knowledge of what Jesus is and has 
done, is the entire secret of escaping 
from the world's corruption, and en- 
tering the life in which we may be ad- 
dressed, as in these Epistles, " elect 
sojourners," " pilgrims and strangers.'* 
(i) We know the Lord Jesus in 
His sinlessness (i Peter ii: 22). He 
took our nature, not as it was in 
unfallen Adam, but further down the 
stream, as it was in the seed of Abra- 
ham, though He was without the 



io6 Cfje (Slorious £or6 

slightest taint of sin. He could face 
the strictest scrutiny, and cry, " Which 
of you convinceth Me of Sin ? " Herod, 
Pilate, Judas, searched His character 
in vain for what would have justified 
to their conscience their foul and 
treacherous deeds. " This Man hath 
done nothing amiss," was the perpetual 
verdict of men on the Man Christ Jesus. 
But this spotless sinlessness did not 
diminish the perfect symmetry of His 
character. He was every whit a Man. 
All the Ages since His death have done 
homage to the incomparable beauty of 
His nature, and extolled Him as their 
example. Pilate's cry has rung down 
the corridor of the centuries, caught up 
by myriad lips, " Behold the Man ! " 
From which we infer that sin is not 
indispensable to our nature— it is ab- 
normal, not normal; accidental, not 
necessary; a disease, a parasite a 
blight, but not a constituent part, 



(Escape from Corruption 107 

Undoubtedly sin is coextensive with 
the range of human life. Wherever 
we find man, we encounter the same 
sins — lying, thieving, adultery, covet- 
ousness, murder. These vices, like 
weeds, are indigenous to every soil, 
and flourish under every sky. But the 
fact that one perfect Life has been 
lived without them, and that those 
who live nearest it share that emanci- 
pation, proves beyond doubt that sin 
is no necessary part of our nature, 
but that a time may come when we 
shall cast it aside, as the ailing child 
the measles, whooping-cough, and 
other diseases incidental to child- 
hood. 

It is a great matter for us to realize 
what was God*s original ideal, when 
He created us; because all that is for- 
eign to His original purpose must 
awake His undying opposition. In our 



io8 Ct?e (Slortous £or6 

combat with it, we may count on His 
ready and efficient aid. 

(2) We know the Lord Jesus has 
SUFFERED IN THE FLESH (i Peter iii: 18; 
iv: i). He suffered for us, and bare 
our sins in His own body on the tree. 
He once offered there a full, perfect, 
and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and 
satisfaction for the whole world. But 
He did more. He died unto sin. He 
ceased out of the Time-world, in which 
sin reigned. In Him, the likeness of 
our sinful flesh was nailed up to the 
ignominy and shame of the cross, 
beneath the curse of God. And all 
was done to emancipate us from the 
dominion of sin, so that we should no 
longer live the rest of our time to the 
lust of men, but to the will of God. 

We must understand this aspect of 
the death of Christ, if we would secure 
all the help the cross was intended to 
give. It is not enough to think of 



(Escape from Corruption 109 

Christ as our Substitute and Sin- 
bearer; we must regard Him as the 
Noah with whom, in the purpose of 
God, we crossed the waters of judg- 
ment between the old world with its 
curse, and the new world on which the 
smile of the Creator lay in benediction 
— the world of resurrection — the new 
heavens and the new earth, arched by 
the bow of hope. 

" Arm yourselves with the same 
mind " (or thought, R. v. marg). Let 
this thought be deeply inwrought by 
the power of the Holy Ghost. Let it 
be the ruling conception of your soul. 
Muse on it as steadfastly as the saint 
is said to have considered the stigmata. 
Gird it about you each morning, as the 
soldier his cuirass before he enters 
on the fight. Whenever the world 
approaches with its soft caress, or 
the flesh allures, or the devil tempts, 
answer each unhallowed suggestion 



no d?e Glorious £orb 

with the words, " I cannot do 
that now; I have passed into a new 
world, where such things are not ad- 
missible; I am seated in Christ Jesus, 
where all that is unclean and defiling 
is far down under my feet." Then 
reckon on the blessed Spirit to make 
your boasting good, and to realize in 
you all that Jesus accomplished when 
He breathed out His Spirit in the last 
throes of death. There is no need to 
be overcome of sin. We are risen: 
we have ascended; we are one with 
Jesus in His glorious triumph. The 
Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead 
dwells in us, and is prepared to real- 
ize in us, as in miniature, all that glory 
and victory which He wrought in our 
glorious Lord. " He that hath suffered 
in the flesh (and we have done that in 
Jesus) hath ceased from sin." Let us 
ponder these deep and precious words. 



(Escape from Corruption iii 
(3) We know that the Lord Jesus 

HAS PURCHASED US FOR HiMSELF. ThlS 

thought is a favorite one with the 
Apostle Peter: " Redeemed, not with 
silver and gold, but with precious 
blood," " A people for God's own pos- 
session"; "Denying even the Master 
that bought them." 

In the wide market-place of the 
world, we stood for sale; nay, rather 
had become sold in sin, and enslaved 
to the will of the Prince of the Power 
of the air. But Jesus bought us for 
Himself. We are His, not only by the 
gift of the Father, but by the purchase 
of His most precious blood. 

Consecration is simply the restoring 
to Christ His own property; recog- 
nizing and answering His rightful 
claims; saying gladly and reverently, 
" I am Thine, O Lord." When once 
this attitude has been thoughtfully as- 
sumed, it answers all the questions 



112 CI?e ®Iortou5 £orb 

which arise in the conduct of hfe. 
These hands are my Master's, they 
may not touch the unclean thing; these 
feet are His, they may not go in for- 
bidden paths; these senses and facul- 
ties are His, they must not be used 
outside the circle of His will; this body 
is His, no voice but His can control or 
direct it; these members are His, they 
may not be presented as weapons of 
unrighteousness unto sin. Reasonings 
like these make us feel that we dare 
not sin. A holy fear forbids that we 
shall grieve our Master, or injure His 
reputation in the world. " We cannot 
do this wickedness," we cry, " for we 
are not our own; we have been bought 
with a price, and we must glorify our 
Master in our body and spirit, which 
are His." And as we say the words in 
the energy of the Holy Ghost, lo ! the 
snare is broken, and we are escaped. 



(Escape from Corruption 113 

(4) We know that through our 
Lord Jesus Christ we have become 
partakers of the divine nature (2 
Pet. i 14). There is no more potent wedge 
than this text to spHt the modern er- 
ror that all men are equally the child- 
ren of God. There is a lower sense 
(that in which the Apostle Paul used 
the words on Mars' Hill) in which all 
men are the children of God, since 
they have sprung from His creative 
hand, but this is not the meaning in 
which the apostles used the words 
when they said, " Because ye are sons, 
He hath sent forth the Spirit of His 
Son in our hearts," and " Now are we 
the sons of God, and it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be." 

Man may be the offspring of God, 
but he is not the son of God until he 
has, in regeneration, received the very 
life of God into his nature. The Spirit 
of God begets in the believing and re- 



114 ^^^ (Slorious £or6 

ceptive spirit that very life which was 
in the Father before the worlds were 
made, and was manifested in the Lord 
Jesus. Thus we become partakers of 
the Divine nature. As a child partakes 
of its mother's life, so do we partake of 
God's. We love what He loves, hate 
as He hates, and make His purposes 
our own. There is, moreover, a per- 
petual communication and interchange 
of life, as of water between the ocean 
and the inlets into the land. As the 
tide rises in the one, it rises in the 
other; and the movements of the one 
are transmitted to the other. 

This is the secret of escaping from 
the defilement around. We have be- 
come possessed of a new set of shuttles 
which are ever weaving desires for pur- 
ity and righteousness, and in contrast 
to these, we have no desire for the old 
sins. Nay, more: Christ is within us, 
and is eager to reproduce Himself in 



(Escape from (Corruption 115 

us, and as He does so, we are weaned 
from the things of which we are now 
ashamed, and hunger with an insatia- 
ble desire to be partakers of the hoH- 
ness of God. 

This is even better than an escape 
. — that Jesus Kves in us by His Spirit, 
and seeks to manifest through our 
yielded lives His own glorious charac- 
ter. 



CHAPTER X 

®tl?er VOoxlblxmss. 

2 Cor. vi: 8, g, lo. 

By the operation of that mysterious 
force which matter exerts on matter, 
the formula of which is contained in 
Newton's definition of the law of grav- 
itation, we are all kept close to the 
surface of our earth. However swift 
its motion, there is no fear of our being 
flung up from the solid ground into the 
air, and away into space. But we do 
not equally realize that, to a certain 
extent, the sun also, millions of miles 
distant, constantly exercises an attrac- 
tive force, by virtue of which we are 
being inseiasibly drawn tov/grd§ it. 



(Dtt^er XDorlbltness 117 

We are incessantly subject to the oper- 
ation of two mighty forces. On the 
one hand, attracted downwards to the 
earth, on the other, upwards to the 
sun. But we are unconscious of the 
latter, because the mass of our planet 
is so much nearer. Suppose, how- 
ever, that we could begin to rise from 
the surface of our earth by the exer- 
cise of our will, and in the track of the 
Ascension of our Lord, every mile that 
we left it, the earth would attract us 
less, and the sun more. When, how- 
ever, we had traversed some consider- 
able distance across the abyss between 
our native home and the source of 
light, we should come to a point where 
the attraction of the earth would be 
exactly balanced by that of the sun, 
and we should remain in perfect equi- 
poise, balanced between the drawing 
power of the earth on the one side, 
and pf tha sirn on the othen But when 



ii8 CI?e ©lorious £or6 

we had passed a hair's breath beyond 
that point, we should be caught into a 
swifter current of mystic power, and 
begin, with ever-increasing velocity, to 
rush towards the glowing surface of the 
sun. 

This illustration will help us to un- 
derstand our relation to two worlds. 
By our natural birth, we are closely 
related to the time-sphere, the system 
of things around us, with all its alter- 
nations of experience, its heat and 
cold, its light and shade, its joy and 
sorrow. We cannot dissociate our- 
selves from the century, the city, the 
circle, to which we belong. But by 
our second birth we become related to 
the unseen and eternal, to the world 
that gathers around the New Jerusalem 
as its metropolis, and finds its centre 
in the person of our Lord. 

In the earlier part of our Christian 
life, we are deeply and perpetually 



(Dtifn IDorlbltness 119 

conscious of the conflicting forces that 
contend for us. On the one side, 
habits, companions, associations strive 
strongly to keep their hold on us, 
whilst Heaven begins steadily to pull 
us away. Presently we reach the 
point of equilibrium and equipoise. 
Time and eternity, the worlds seen 
and unseen, exert an equal power; we 
hover between the two; now dipping 
back into the one, now borne swiftly 
towards the other. But the more 
blessed experience is yet to come, 
wherein we are hardly aware of the 
pull of earth, because we are aban- 
doned to the strong and blessed cur- 
rent which is bearing us nearer to our 
true center of bliss in God. 

Holy souls have ever felt the momen- 
tum and energy of that current. It 
was this which drew Abraham from 
Charran, and made the patriarchs will- 
ing to dwell in tents. And it is this 



I20 Cf?e ©lortous £or6 

which has made the saints pass through 
the earth, as Christian and Faithful 
through Vanity Fair, regardless of the 
enticement that would arrest their 
steps. " Our citizenship is in heaven, 
from whence also we wait for a 
Saviour." " We look for and hasten 
unto the coming of the day of God.*' 

Other worldliness is the true method 
of unworldliness. The lives of many 
amongst us are full of negations, with 
very little of the positive and affirma- 
tive. It is as though we were to take 
one side of the Apostle's paradoxes, 
without the other. Unknown, but not 
well-known; dying, but not living; sor- 
rowful, but never rejoicing; poor, yet 
never enriched; as having nothing in 
this world, and possessing nothing in 
the next. Miserable, indeed, is such a 
life as this. It is as if we were to try 
to wrench ourselves from the earth- 
sphere by the forcf of oi;r will, befgr^ 



©tijer XDorlbUness 121 

ever we had felt or yielded to the beck- 
oning attraction of the sun. 

The easier and better way is to sur- 
render ourselves more entirely and 
obediently to the tender constraint of 
heaven. Think less of the world you 
are leaving than of that which is at- 
tracting you. Seek to be heavenly- 
minded by the grace and power of the 
Holy Spirit. Lay up treasures in 
heaven by the judicious administration 
of all your possessions on earth. Set 
your affections on things above, not on 
things on the earth. Let the drift and 
set of your thoughts be towards the 
movements of the blessed Lord as He 
goes forth, followed by the armies of 
heaven, to put down all rule and 
authority and power. Tread the streets 
of the heavenly city, lave in its fount- 
ain, pluck the fruits from its tree of 
life, hold converse with its inhabitants. 
^* Y§ ar§ Qome unto inount .^ion, unto 



122 Cf?e ©lortous £or6 

the city of the living God, the heavenly 
Jerusalem, and the spirits of just men 
made perfect/' 

Then almost insensibly you will be- 
come unworldly. You will view with- 
out heartbreak the wreck of patterns 
of things in the heavens, because you 
have found the heavenly things them- 
selves. You will not scruple to part 
with all your sham jewels, because you 
have found the pearl of great price. 
You will not view with much chagrin 
the fading of the chaplet of earthly 
glory, because you have become pos- 
sessed of the incorruptible crown that 
fadeth not away. 

Let lis reverse the Apostle' s magnifi' 
cent series of paradoxes. Let us be 
true, transparent, and sincere before 
the eye of God and His holy angels, 
and we shall not be greatly moved, 
though all men count us deceivers. 
Let us seek to be well-known in 



(Dtl?er JDorlbltness 123 

heaven as those that pray and work for 
the coming of the kingdom, and we 
shall be content to live as unknown in 
the esteem of this babbling and vain 
world. Let us be quick with God's 
life beating high within us, and we shall 
be willing to fall into the ground to die. 
Let us drink deep from the chalices 
of heaven's gladness, and we shall 
bear the stings of whips of time with 
patient composure. Let us amass the 
treasures of a noble character, and 
possess ourselves of the unsearchable 
riches of Christ, and we shall be con- 
tent to be poor, and to have nothing. 
Give us heaven, O God, and we shall 
be weaned from the breasts of conso- 
lation that are everything to others. 
Inevitably, a life like this will bring us 
into collision with men around us. It 
could not be otherwise. They are be- 
ing swept along by the earth-current, 
we are on the heaven-current. They 



124 ^^^ (Slortous Corb 

are being drawn downward, we upward; 
so there must be antagonism and col- 
lision as we pass. " Marvel not if the 
world hate you. If ye were of the 
world, the world would love its own; 
but because ye are not of the world, 
but I have chosen you out of the world, 
therefore the world hateth you." 

We may gauge the directness and 
swiftness of our course heavenward by 
remarking the intensity of the world's 
hatred and scorn; yet we must never 
cease to pity it and weep for it, and 
exert ourselves to the uttermost to de- 
liver those who are being swept to ruin 
by its insidious streams. " He was in 
the world, and the world was made by 
Him, and the world knew Him not.'* 
But he so loved the world. Other- 
worldliness weans us from that love of 
the world, which is unholy and harm- 
ful; and inspires a love which is pure 
and holy, self-sacrificing and divine. 



(Dtt^er XDorlbUness 125 

The world is the inspired symbol of 
transcience. It passeth away like the 
shows of a theatre. Permanent though 
it appear, the scene is changing whilst 
we gaze, like a dissolving view. And 
even before it fades, its lust is gone 
(i John ii: 17). The power to enjoy 
dies down in satiety. Woeful, indeed, 
would it be if some day we were to 
wake up to find the thirst of desire 
burning within the soul, whilst the zest 
of enjoyment and the source of satis- 
faction were gone for ever ! Is not this 
the worm that never dies, the fire that 
is never quenched ? 

But thrice blessed is it to obey the 
divine summons, and to yield to the 
attraction of the Unseen and Eternal. 
Because the power of pure enjoyment 
is ever on the increase, and the taste 
becomes more refined to detect the 
flavor of the best wine, kept to the 
last, and there is always some sweeter 



126 Cije Glorious Corb 

note, some more delicate hue of color, 
some more rapturous experience of 
bliss. Though we penetrate into the 
divine nature for countless ages, there 
will always be something in God we 
have never explored, and always in- 
creased power to appreciate and enjoy. 
Let us begin to yield ourselves more 
than ever to the attractions and blessed- 
ness of that great Voice from heaven, 
w^hich calls us to come up thither. 
Leaving what is behind, let us walk — 
let us run — let us mount up with wings 
as eagles. 



CHAPTER XI 

"Ct?e pitcljer anb (Sob's IPeli;' 

John v: 39. 

In the rush of the present day there 
has been a great multiplication of Daily 
Text-Books, and the fear is lest many 
may get into the habit of supposing 
that they have done their duty by their 
Bibles when they have caught up a 
text, or glanced down a page of care- 
fully prepared text mosaic. But one 
might as well suppose that it were pos- 
sible to sustain physical health by 
eating all one's meals at restaurant 
bars, selecting a choice dainty here or 
a biscuit there. Certainly the daily 
text is better than nothing, but it is a 



128 Ct?e Glorious £or6 

poor substitute for deliberate, careful 
study of the Word of God. 

The whole Bible bears evidence of 
the care with which each generation 
fed on the Scriptures antecedent to it- 
self. The Psalter bears witness to the 
value David set on the limited sacred 
library he possessed, for his Psalms 
are strongly tinctured and colored by 
its thoughts and phrases. Micah re- 
appears in Isaiah, and Daniel in the 
Apocalypse. The Old Testament is 
the perpetual standard of appeal to the 
writers of the New, and where they do 
not actually quote it, it is not difficult 
to discover evidences of its influence 
on their modes of thought and expres- 
sion. The Old Testament is the quar- 
ry of the New. It is no exaggeration 
to say that the aim of the New Testa- 
ment is the unfolding and explanation 
of the treasures of the Old. When, 
therefore, we turn to our Bibles, let us 



"pitcl^et anb 6o6's WdV 129 

remember the hands by which those 
precious pages have been turned, the 
eyes by which each expression has been 
scanned, and the hearts which have 
been taught and nourished by those 
sacred words. In the case of the Old 
Testament this vast host would of 
course comprise all the writers of the 
New, and best of all, the Son of Man 
Himself; in the case of the New, the 
entire Church of the redeemed. Let 
us read as an Augustine might have 
done, when the voice in the gardens of 
Tagaste whispered, To/le^ lege ; or as 
Luther might have done, in the Au- 
gustinian convent; or as Livingstone 
might have done, from his worn Tes- 
tament, in the heart of Africa. New 
though the page of your Bible may ap- 
pear, fresh from the press, it is soiled 
by the use and wet with the tears of 
all the generations. 

Read deliberately. — In order to keep 



130 CI?e ©lorious £or6 

the peace with their consciences, some 
read standing bolt upright in their 
rooms, in momentary expectation of 
the breakfast bell; others glance down 
their portion when wearied out with 
the day's toil and about to sleep. 
Where this is unavoidable, it would be 
unreasonable to complain, and without 
doubt, the miracle of the manna is re- 
peated, by which, it is said, " they 
who gathered little had no lack." 

But for perhaps the majority of 
those who read this paper there is leis- 
ure to eat; and it is with the view of 
helping them that these words are 
penned. Take time, or make time. If 
you have to curtail your Bible-reading 
or your prayer, let it be the latter; for 
it is less important for you to speak to 
God than to hear what God has to say 
to you. Sit quietly down in your most 
comfortable chair, prepared to have a 
good time. It seems to me a mistake 



"pitcljer anb (gob's IDeir' 131 

to read the Bible in a kneeling or con- 
strained position, whilst you read your 
favorite author ensconced in comfort. 
Enter into your closet, and shut your 
door; give time for the world's glare to 
pass from your eyes, and its tumult 
from your ears. Imitate the listener 
at the telephone, who shuts himself in 
the little cupboard, and sets himself 
down to talk with his unseen friend. 

Read consecutively , — Nothing is more 
irreverent to the spirit of Scripture 
than to read a passage here or there as 
the Book falls open. By all means 
read the Bible through. Adopt one of 
the many plans now in vogue. What- 
ever it be, mind to read the New Tes- 
tament along with the Old, and per- 
haps spending longer over its deeper 
doctrinal portions than over its narra- 
tives. 

Use the references, — It is of great 
importance to use a Bible with good 



132 Cf?e ©lorious £or6 

marginal references. I owe more than 
I can tell to the habit of turning to the 
parallel passages, first, as suggested by 
the Annotated Paragraph Bible, and 
lately by the Treasury of Scripture 
Knozvledge, ^ The latter is especially 
valuable now that I use habitually the 
R.V., which, of course, is destitute of 
the marginal references of the editions 
of the A.V. There is so much to 
be said in favor of the use of the 
R.V., its freshness, accuracy, sug- 
gestive marginal notes, paragraphing, 
and absence of misleading headings to 
chapters and pages, that it is a great 
loss to have to supply the marginal ref- 
erences from elsewhere. But this 
lack may be amply met by the latter 
of the books mentioned above. After 
reading your portion carefully and 
thoughtfully through, open yonv Treas- 

* Published by Fleming H, Revell Com- 
pany. 



"pitcfjer anb ®o6^5 IDell " 133 

u/y and go through it again, turning to 
the passages indicated, and you will 
find almost invariably that fresh light 
will come to the passage already read, 
as flints struck together emit sparks, 
and that some direct message is fur- 
nished to the soul by a passage in an- 
other part of Scripture. 

It is, of course, competent to pursue 
the references of an ordinary Bible 
without the use of the special books 
named; and in time it may be well to 
discard all such references, and to make 
your own. Some of the most valuable 
side-lights to Scripture occur to oneself 
after a course of years devoted to this 
careful comparison of scripture with 
scripture. At the same time, we 
should be reverently careful not to con- 
nect passages on account of their ver- 
bal or fanciful connections. This habit 
is disastrous, and diverts the mind 
from the intelligent study and appreci- 



134 ^f?^ ©lorious £orb 

ation of Scripture. There are so 
many obvious and necessary quotations 
and references that it is needless and 
wrong to import the fantastical and ex- 
travagant. 

Study books as a whole. — Permit me, 
though at the risk of being counted 
egotistical, to tell a favorite practice. 
I like, especially when I am on a long 
journey, or during my vacation, to take 
an Epistle or Gospel or Prophecy, and 
read it over and over. Take, for in- 
stance, the First Epistle of John. You 
read it the first day without any special 
hght striking you. You receive the gen- 
eral impression that it is about love, and 
that is all. You read it the second 
day, and the third, and these impres- 
sions are confirmed, but, in addition, 
you become aware that certain words 
are constantly recurring, which seem 
like stepping-stones across a brook. 
After some more readings, these ap- 



"pitcl?er anb &ob's IDell" 135 

pear as the nuclei of the treatise; and 
probably you will underline them, each 
with its own color or mark, to show 
their relation. In this way the object 
of the book is clearly defined, and the 
details fall into place. It is like get- 
ting a plan of the country before be- 
ginning to traverse it. 

What new interest attaches to Bible 
study, when we discover the secret of 
each book, in this way, for ourselves ! 
To have been told it by another will 
never be of the same value as to find it 
for ourselves. In this sense it is true 
that to those who overcome their leth- 
argy and natural indolence, a white 
stone is given, and in the stone a new 
name, which only he who receives it 
knows. Be sure of this, that every 
book has its message, and that all its 
hard and difficult, rugged or stony bits, 
its seeming contradictions to the rest of 
Scripture, will yield when the drift of 



136 Cf?e ®loriou5 £or6 

the whole is apprehended. We must 
interpret the parts by the purpose of 
the whole 

Read the Bible topically. — There are 
some who take a word and study it 
throughout the Bible, but it is difficult 
to do this unless you are sure that the 
original word is always rendered by the 
same words in the English version, 
otherwise you will get into endless con- 
fusion. Take the word perfect, for 
instance, which stands for three or four 
Greek words, one or two of which 
have nothing to do with moral purity 
and beauty. If you wish to study 
words, you must use a Hebrew or Greek 
Concordance, or its equivalent in Eng- 
lish; then it is extremely interesting 
and instructive to trace the develop- 
jnent of the meaning, the increased 
connotation of a word, like Faith, or 
Love, or Repentance, 

It is, however^ even t)etter to take a 



"pttcl?er anb (gob's VOdV 137 

subject and trace it through the Bible. 
Nothing so convinces one of the homo- 
geneity of the Bible as this. Though 
written by so many different authors, 
over so great a lapse of time, it is 
essentially one Book, the product of 
one informing mind, the Word of God. 
Take, for instance, the overthrow of 
Satan, as shadowed forth in the open- 
ing chapters. There are constant ref- 
erences made to the progress of the 
great fight, until we reach the casting 
of the devil into the great pit of the 
Apocalypse, and these are the staples 
of the chain. The links are found in 
nearly every page, which tells of the 
perpetual feud between the seed of the 
woman and the seed of the serpent, 
between the armies that follow the 
Lamb on white horses and the prin- 
cipalities and powers of darkness. 
Traces of it appear in Psalm xci., with 
its references to lion and dragon; in 



138 Cl?e (glorious £or6 

Luke X., with our Lord's assurance 
that His disciples should tread on all 
the power of the enemy; and in Ephes- 
ians i. and vi. , where allusion is made 
to Christ's triumphant ascension above 
all the dark powers. What a flood of 
light such a study casts on the whole 
course of Revelation ! 

Read the Bible with pen in hand, — 
Mark the words that call to one an- 
other in the same chapter, draw lines 
of connection between parallel phrases, 
insert your own references, underscore 
your favorite texts, put dates or names 
against verses which have a history at- 
tached to them. And when one Bible 
is worn out, be careful not to transfer 
your markings to another, lest your 
views become stereotyped, and you 
always read your Bible under the same 
aspect. But begin to make another 
set of references and markings. Thus 
we should wear our Bibles out at least 



"pitcfjer anb 6o6^s iDeir' 139 

as often as we change our skins. 
Small pens making but a faint mark 
are provided for this purpose. 

Read the Bible devotionally. — It is a 
bush in which the Divine fire is burn- 
ing, take the shoes from off your feet. 
It is a shrine where the Ark of God is 
resting, draw near with reverence. 
There is a great danger lest we should 
multiply maps, and commentaries, and 
illustrative books of oriental travel, to 
the loss of the devotional attitude. 
We should approach the Bible, as 
Jesus must have done in those thirty 
years of meditation and seclusion. Let 
not those meddle with criticism who 
have not time to give themselves to 
the study of the whole question. Our 
best practical proof that the Bible is 
inspired is by its effect on us in our 
highest moods. Let us look to it for 
the stimulus and culture of our best 
life. This makes it the god of Books 



I40 Ct?e glorious Cor6 

to us. And let us open it with the 
ancient prayer, " Open Thou mine 
eyes, that I may behold wondrous 
things out of Thy law.'' 

Let me urge on my readers the re- 
peated reading of the longest Psalm, 
cxix. It is of inestimable benefit in 
inculcating that frame of mind which 
is necessary when we enter the thresh- 
old of this ancient fane, whose walls 
were built by reverent hands long cold, 
whose windows admit the light of eter- 
nity, whose storied heights ring ever 
with the notes of the Divine voice. 
Of that Psalm, the perpetual refrain is, 
as it should be of our life. Teach me 
Thy statutes. 

Read the Bible practically. — What- 
ever you read, turn forthwith to prac- 
tice. We have only as much truth as 
we do. It is not the hearer, but the 
doer, who is blessed. It is one of the 
catch-words of Deuteronomy, " Heark- 



"pttcfjer anb &ob's IDetr' 141 

en and Do. " Only as we hear the words 
of Christ, and do them, shall we be 
like a house founded on a rock that 
shall stand immovable against the burst 
of the storm. 

I have often noticed people in a con- 
vention taking down every word most 
diligently, and at the close saying com- 
placently, " I have got it all here.** 
What have they got ? Only the signs, 
the counters, the embodiment of truth; 
but not the truth itself. That is theirs 
only so far as they live up to what they 
have heard. And it is better to do one 
thing for God because He has bidden 
us, than to cram a hundred into our 
minds as though for a competitive ex- 
amination. 

Each day read your chapter or pass- 
age with the idea that you are receiv- 
ing your marching-orders, that there 
is some new service to render, some 
new duty to perform, some new virtue 



142 1XI?e ©iortous £or6 

to acquire. Let the attitude of your 
soul be indicated by Samuers word, 
" Speak, Lord, for Thy servant hear- 
eth." When you hear, do. What 
you have been taught, embody in ac- 
tion. Take the precepts of the Bible 
as requiring literal and immediate obe- 
dience. Let the Spirit guide you into 
all truth; the onward and upward step- 
ping of obedience, beneath His leading, 
will be the best commentary on what 
is difficult and obscure. So shall you 
climb to the Pisgah height, where all 
the realms of Bible truth to the utmost 
sea shall lie apparent to your gaze. 



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